Is Your Dad a Big Softie?
Want to give the chap in your life a thoughtful gift? Even 'rufty tufty' types appreciate a bit of TLC! Especially those who enjoy outdoorsy activities such as gardening or watersports. Such pursuits are great for health and soul, but skin can take a battering from sun, wind, sea, salt and soil.
Jim Parkhouse of Basket of Bees says, “For Father’s Day, natural skincare is not generally people’s first thought for a gift, but we have soaps for all – including ones with no fragrance or colour, so they’re suitable and helpful for all skin types. Our Gardeners Honey Hand soap includes cajuput essential oil, which has natural antiseptic and antibacterial properties (wonderful for finding those little scratches and nicks from brambles and the like) and an aroma of eucalyptus. It also helps stop skin from drying out when working in the soil. Carrot Seed hand soap has similar properties and a lovely woody, earthy fragrance. Both soaps are full of good things that can help your hands after a day in the garden.”
Other suggestions include Cyril’s Soap Shed’s Gardener’s Soap. This is made with raw goat’s milk, which has excellent moisturising and healing properties, plus oatmeal and lavender for ‘added scrubbiness’. Just add one of their wooden soap dishes and nail brushes for a really useful gift set.
New Forest Aromatics have a Gardeners Hand Scrub and Gardeners Hand Balm. The Scrub is great for exfoliating rough and muddy hands while the Balm soothes and nourishes. Ingredients include New Forest beeswax and honey, and Hampshire lavender and peppermint essential oils. Another really useful gift from New Forest Aromatics, this one in conjuction with Sinah Common Honey, is WiSP Balm, great for anyone with dry, cracked and irritated skin including cyclists, climbers, runners, rowers and sailors. It is made with 100% natural ingredients including propolis and beeswax, shea butter and lavender essential oils. In addition, £1 from every tin sold goes towards Help for Heroes!
For weather-dried, chapped lips, there's a very effective trio of lip balms from Bee Good, presented in a hexagonal gift box. Alternatively, what about a jar of lavendar and mint lip balm from Lavender Fields. They also have a lavender shampoo soap bar - great idea for taking to the gym.
Great local, natural products to soften up the man in your life, and they're practical, too.