Saving Paradise

Category: Heritage Gardens | Date: Jul 01 2009 | By: savingparadise

 The heritage gardens

Yesterday, I spent some agonizing  seconds chasing a lone mosquito out of our office. I didn’t enjoy the little bites it was taking and the buzzing near the ears certainly didn’t help. Being nature friendly, we don’t use insecticide or pesticide here at Roche Caiman. Eventually, the lone ranger left the building. But it got me thinking. Malaria is a huge problem, so is Yellow fever and the West Nile virus, all spread by mosquitoes. So no one likes mosquitoes really. The most natural thing for anyone to do, especially anyone who’s been in the grip of malarial fever, is to find the quickest means to be rid of mosquitoes. This usually involves substances that are unfriendly to the environment like insecticide.

But there are friendlier alternatives. I found some advise ranging from wearing light clothing - apparently mosquitoes are attracted to dark clothing -  and reducing your carbon aura. This is the aura you emit when CO2 comes off you, like when you exercise or sweat. See more tips here. But what got me really interested - in our weather, sweating is the default setting - was the list of natural insect repellents that use the essential oils from plants as a base such as peppermint and rosemary oil. What you do is crash these plants and rub the oil in key areas such as the ears. So I rushed out to our Heritage Gardens - see first post - to ask Lucina, our naturalist what she had in the form of natural mosquito repellent.

From the list she had Citronella, Cinnamon and Rosemary. That saved the day. Hey, what’s cooler than getting rid of mosquitoes without carrying the guilt of actually killing one (you know am half kidding right?) and being friendly to the environment?

Related post: Seychelles food security: edible landscaping on Nirmal Shah’s Island Life blog.

Tags: essential oils, mosquito repellent., natural reppellent