Scents & sensibility
Once upon a time, potpourri was a popular way to freshen up a space. Now, for some, it feels a bit like the lava lamp of fragrance: an outdated fad from a bygone decade.
So, why was potpourri so popular in the 1980’s, and what happened to it? Did the trend dry up… or just evolve?
We explore the transformation of potpourri, from the fermented mush of the Victorian era to the perfumed and colorful bag of pine cones of the eighties, and talk to a few of the people still making potpourri today.
This story originally ran in September 2021.
Featuring Yvette Weaver, Carly Still, Laure Moutet, Autumn Anderson, Paulus, and Ednita Tingle.
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Photo captions, from top left to bottom right: 1) Roses plucked for Taylor Quimby’s DIY moist potpourri 2) Taylor’s moist potpourri after a couple initial days of salt fermentation 3) Taylor’s finished jar of moist potpourri 4) Curly pods from India, an important ingredient in mass market potpourri 5) Various potpourri ingredients as catalogued by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 6) Indian worker slicing botanicals for potpourri, courtesy Laure Moutet 7) Indian worker bleaching botanicals for potpourri, courtesy Laure Moutet 8) Worker bleaching lotus flowers, courtesy Laure Moutet 9) Laure Moutet posing with botanicals being dried by the sun after being bleached and dyed, courtesy Laure Moutet 10) Indian potpourri bleaching and dying operation, courtesy Laure Moutet 11) Autumn Anderson’s moss and mushroom potpourri 12) Autumn Anderson’s driftwood potpourri
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LINKS
An 1895 recipe from Sweet from Sweet Scented Flowers and Fragrant Leaves for 50-year moist potpourri (the recipe begins on page 42).
From Death Scents: more fascinating info on the history of medieval trends that predate potpourri and the rise of “rotten pot” potpourri.
Fragrant Potpourri Preserves the Floral Scents of Summer: A 1975 NYT article that bridges the gap between moist and dried potpourri recipes.
A 1988 Glade Potpourri Spray commercial: Catchy tune!
CREDITS
Hosted by Justine Paradis
Reported and produced by Taylor Quimby
Edited by Justine Paradis
Mixed by Taylor Quimby
Additional editing by Felix Poon and Jessica Hunt
Executive Producer: Rebecca Lavoie
Special thanks to Rosalyn LaPier, Mark Nesbit, and to NHPR’s voices from the ‘80s: Nick Capodice, Josh Rogers, Emily Quirk, Patricia McLaughlin, Rick Ganley, and Rebecca Lavoie.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Ben Nestor.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In (and Civics 101) are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
TRANSCRIPT: Scents & sensibility
Nate Hegyi: Hey, folks, I'm Nate. This is Outside/In, you probably already know that. I just wanted to give a big thank you to all the folks that donated to the show during our little fund drive.
If you got yourself one of those sweet opossum mugs, please take a picture of it in the wild and send it via social media or by email so we can share it in our newsletter. We have some really special stuff coming up in the next couple of months, including a super secret mini series that I'm not going to tell you about yet, but I will give you a hint.
And a handful of episodes we’re planning around Earth Day slash week slash month that you're not going to want to miss either. But this week we are celebrating the end of February, thank God, by digging up one of our most colorful springiest episodes in recent memory. Sense and sensibility. Enjoy.
Taylor Quimby: Hey Justine Paradis.
Justine Paradis: Hey Taylor Quimby.
Taylor Quimby: Do you ever remember something from your childhood, that at the time seemed totally normal - like the just the way the world is - but in retrospect you find it totally and utterly baffling?
Justine Paradis: I guess like… low-rise jeans. Completely unacceptable at this point. For me.
Taylor Quimby: A lot of fashion feels that way when you look back at it.
Justine Paradis: Yes, but low-rise jeans in particular cut you off in a deeply uncomfortable way, like sitting is uncomfortable. I personally find the high-rise like much more flat, like it just doesn’t make any sense that they would be low-rise.
Taylor Quimby: Okay. Well I can’t speak to that one, but I can tell you for me, that thing is pot pourri.
JP: Potpourri.
[mux begin a beat sooner, here or right after you say “potpourri”]
Taylor: Like I remember once picking up a bowl of potpourri on a side table in my living room and just thinking… “why? WHY? What is this?
And I have since polled some of my Gen Z and elder millennial colleagues, and have confirmed that it’s not just me.
Taylor Quimby: Do you remember pot-pourri being a big thing in the 80s and 90s.
Rebecca: Yes!
Nick: Potpourri was everywhere
Emily: Weird herbs and bits in a bowl.
Rebecca: Top of the toilet, coffee table, everywhere.
Josh: To me it’s this sort of Reagan era…
Reagan political ad: It’s morning in America.
Josh: … the same time that Pac-man was big.
Taylor Quimby: I will say though - the potpourri trend doesn’t seem to have infiltrated every home in this era.
REbecca: I don’t want to say it was mostly white people, but in my experience it was.
Nick: I never had it at my house because my dad got a headache from anything that smelled funny, and the first time I saw it at my friends house I was like “oh what’s this” and I took a bit out of it.
Justine Paradis: Nick took a bite out of it?
Taylor Quimby: What would you list, in terms of the types of ingredients that you might find in a potpourri, what kinds of things.
Rebecca: Dead flowers.
Nick: Dried rose petals is like the go-to.
Emily: Cloves, cinnamon sticks.
Rebecca: Beans, peas.
Nick: Little bits of wood.
Trish: Wood chips.
Nick: Like, little sticks.
Rebecca: Tiny pinecones, which quite cute actually.
Emily: Dried orange pieces.
Nick: Dried orange pieces, that’s what I tried to eat. And it was terrible.
Justine Paradis: I do feel like it’s the word salad, where anything can go in a salad.
Taylor Quimby: The thing about potpourri is that it wasn’t like a quiet home decor fad - it truly broke into mainstream culture.
Nick: Before I saw it at anybody’s house I just knew it as a category in Jeopardy that sort of meant everything.
Alex Trebek: Categories… potpourri.
TV person 1: Potpourri.
TV person 2: It’s Potpourri!
Martha Stewart: Potpourri!
Jenny Jones: People love… do you love it audience? It smells so good up here.
Emily: And I also remember the commercials… like the Glade commercials.
Glade commercial: [singing] It’s a little spray of country! It’s Glade potpourri in a spray...
Emily: All very sexist, now that I think about it.
Glade commercial 2: [singing] How’d you get those flowers in there? Glade potpourri is fresh of the air!
Justine: Oh yeah. Totally. I remember this episode of Friends when the whole joke is how girly potpourri is -
Joey from Friends: What is with these chips you bought?
Joey’s roommate: It’s potpourri. You’re supposed to smell it.
Josh: It seemed like a ubiquitous mom aunt gift.
Rebecca: Roughly coincided with too many throw pillows on your couch.
Josh: It’s sort of like incense without the counterculture.
Glade commercial: No-one potpourris like Glade!
Taylor Quimby: And yet - when I think about it, I feel like potpourri compared to other things from the 80s and 90s, has completely vanished. But I will say this with all the pandemic home crafting going on… I have been clued into the fact that there this very quiet revival going on… And it’s got me asking all these questions.
Like….what’s the deal with potpourri?
Trish: Why did it get here and why did anybody think it was a particularly great idea?
Taylor Quimby: Where did it come from?
Josh: I would be curious to know when it really phased out.
Taylor Quimby: Wherefore art thou potpourri?
Justine Paradis: [With reverb and echo] WHEREFORE ART THOU POTPOURRI???
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, you gotta fall to your knees in the rain when you say this.
Justine Paradis: You ask the hard questions always in your journalism Taylor.
Taylor Quimby: It’s what I do.
[Outside/In FUN theme]
Justine Paradis: This is Outside/In, a show about the natural world and how we use it. I’m Justine Paradis.
On today’s episode… Taylor Quimby brings us: “scents and sensibility.” Once upon a time, potpourri was used as a natural way to freshen up a space - Now - for some - it seems a bit like the lava lamp of fragrance... an outdated fad from a bygone era.
Taylor Quimby: Or is it? Did the potpourri trend dry up? Or just evolve?
In this episode, we’re tracking the scent of potpourri - from its origins in the Victorian era, through the potpourri boom of the 1980s… all the way to today.
[mux swell and fade]
Taylor Quimby: It’s an over-simplistic stereotype that the middle ages in Europe smelled bad. Yes, there would definitely been some particularly pungent odors - but people really cared about smell.
Yvette Weaver 16: So there’s rosemary, there’s lavenders, there’s oregano, thymes, there’s a lot of fragrance happening there.. sweet alyssum with that beautiful honey scent. [fades underneath]
And that’s why a flower called Rosa Gallica - or, the Apothecary’s Rose - was the most popular most coveted variety of rose in Europe for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Yvette Weaver 15: They’re just intoxicating, like you have to stop and smell the roses, you really truly cannot pass by them without leaning over and smelling them.
[mux swell]
This is Yvette Weaver, an assistant horticulturist at the Met Cloisters in Manhattan.
Which is, essentially, a medieval monastery -- or, a museum built to feel like one, built on a hill at the northern tip of Manhattan. There are unicorn tapestries, Frescos, stained glass… and a medieval garden, with plants historically used as medicine, as poison, for cooking... and those used especially for scent...
And one in particular … the Apothecary’s Rose.
Carly Still: This sweet honey fragrance that I say is like medicine for the soul. You want that in your body.
Here’s Yvette’s colleague Carly Still, Managing horticulturist at the Met Cloisters. The smell of the Apothecary’s Rose — well, it’s right there in the name. It was the basis of an entire industry, the main ingredient of many an apothecary product
Carly Still 8: Rosewater, or rose honey, or rose petals just sprinkled in drawers…They could be molded into little rosary beads.
Get it? ROSARY BEADS? Anyway, the apothecary’s rose was also the basis of - you guessed it - potpourri.
Early potpourri was made in a fermentation process that was by today’s standards might be considered pretty unpleasant. It was almost like a floral compost - over the course of the spring and summer, one might keep tossing in petals and spices. The mixture would wilt, and rot until the sickly sweet smell became almost nauseating.
The process sounds a little like cooking -- and you know, it’s fermentation, so it kinda was. Which makes sense, then, when you look at the history of the word potpourri. Initially it was a french translation for a category of Spanish or Portuguese meat stew.
And what it translated to is “rotten pot”.
Victorian potpourri is described as a grey, wet, sometimes moldy mixture. It wasn’t meant to be used for decoration - rather, it was a natural perfume - an olfactory snapshot of spring, preserved and hidden in special perforated jars that released the scent without revealing the contents. The 19th century version of a Glade plug-in.
[mux - An Opus in Ab]
I wanted to see for myself what Victorian era potpourri might have looked and smelled like… So I looked for recipe.
The oldest one I could get my hands on came from an 1895 book called “Sweet Scented Flowers and Fragrant Leaves”.
Taylor [making potpourri] 2 - The following mixture is said to retain it’s fragrance for fifty years! (wow) Gather early in the day, when perfectly dry, a peck of roses. Pick off the petals and strew them over three quarters of a pound of common salt. [fades]
The recipe called for a peck of rose petals - about 2 and a third gallons. I did my best converting measurement down for the two pints of petals I plucked from a standard grocery store bouquet.
Taylor [making potpourri] 5 - We’re gonna need a bigger bowl. [SFX of tupperware]
Taylor Quimby: I’ll put the recipe on our website, but basically you lay freshly plucked petals over gobs and gobs of salt for a few days.
Once they’ve begun to moisten and wilt, you add cloves, allspice, more salt, brown sugar….
Taylor [making potpourri] 4 - SFX of brown sugar scraping]
Taylor Quimby: Something called Orris root powder, made from the roots of an Iris, and used to soak up and preserve the smell of the roses… And then of course my favorite ingredient.
Taylor [making potpourri] 9 - It says to add one gill of brandy… but I don’t know what a gill is...
Taylor Quimby: A gill is a quarter of a pint.
[SFX of bottle pop]
...So we will be doing courvoisier. Little for me.
Phineas: Oh that smells awful.
That’s my son, Phin. He’s 10.
At first, the mixture looked rather pretty - the petals were turning a rich shade of raspberry… the spices gave them a gritty, pulpy look.
But as time went on, juices seeped to the bottom of the tupperware - which is ruined forever by the way - and the petals darkened to a deep burgundy wine… and then, the color of blood and dirt.
[places jar of potpourri on the table]
Justine Paradis: This is not what I had in mind.
I dropped a jar off with Justine to take a look.
Justine Paradis: It looks like a pile… of stewed meat?
Taylor Quimby: Like giant, wet craisins.
Justine Paradis: Used… used bandages. But still wet.
Taylor Quimby: Wow. Put that on your coffee table and smell it.
But even stranger than the look was the smell - which to me anyway, well let’s just say, it gave me a migraine.
Taylor Quimby: Before you open that jar I’m a little worried about you actually because I know you’re in your closet and it’s a small space and that is a powerful jar of intense smelling potpourri. Like DO NOT STICK YOUR NOSE IN THAT JAR.
Justine Paradis: Oh really? Okay. I would have done that.
Taylor Quimby: Do not do that, you’ll be out of commission for the rest of the day.
Justine Paradis: Jesus Christ, okay. I’m like nervous, I’m going to open the closet door…
Taylor Quimby: If you want to bring your mic outside, I think that would be fine.. This is…
Justine Paradis: I’ll be okay.
[unscrews and sniffs the jar]
Oh… I don’t think that’s that bad!
Taylor Quimby: Oh good! I’m so please to hear that!
Justine Paradis: It kind of smells like… cider.
Taylor Quimby: What you’re probably smelling is the brandy. Because the roses themselves just weren’t that fragrant
Justine Paradis: So that makes sense, this is not the apothecary’s rose.
Taylor Quimby: I’m sure I could have gotten them if I really work at it and spend a bunch of the radio station’s money -
Justine Paradis: Why not.
Taylor Quimby: - But you know, for this story I just went to the grocery store and this is what you can get.
Justine Paradis: Well, I actually think that you did a nice job and… I don’t know how you would present this potpourri, because it is true that it doesn’t… It doesn’t look great. But I dunno, maybe it’s just in the eye of the beholder. I don’t know. I can see it having it’s place.
[mux]
So how did potpourri go from this -- the “rotten pot”... to popular enough to become an iconic object of the 80’s --- even to make on Martha Stewart?
Martha Stewart: Make potpourri!
Jenny Jones: People love… do you love potpourri audience? It smells so good up here!
The famed Apothecary’s Rose - the one I substituted for cheap flowers from the produce section - is a perfect flower for sweet-smelling potpourri - but when you breed a flower for smell, there are sometimes tradeoffs.
Their bushes are a little stubbier, the stems not so long… And you have to catch them at just the right time. Again, here’s
Yvette Weaver 14: That period of time that it’s blooming is much shorter than our newer roses in general.
And so in the 19th and 20th centuries, breeders started experimenting with other varieties. Roses that bloomed longer and more regularly, and roses that could be cut, shipped and shown around the world.
The apothecary’s rose fell out of favor, and what took its place had plenty to swoon over - but not much to smell. Here’s Carly Still:
Carly Still 10: Roses that we find in the florist are sort of packed and packed with petals but without the fragrance side of it.
[mux swell and fade]
And I suspect that’s one of the reasons moist potpourri is a thing of the past.
I mean, why bother with a wet, time-consuming process if the whole point is to capture a smell that’s barely there?
Over the 20th century, potpourri recipes stopped calling for a process of flower fermentation -- and started incorporating pre-dried flowers. You can guess a few reasons why -- not only is the Apothecary’s rose less available, this recipe would also be less messy, a little nicer to look at, and is less time-consuming.
So the question becomes: how did it get everywhere -- at least, everywhere in 1980’s middle class America?
Nick Capodice: I don’t even believe it’s real. That potpourri isn’t real, right?
Rebecca Lavoie: It’s like a carnation of room fresheners, right?
Nick Capodice: Like the smell is NOT just from dried flowers… isn’t there also perfume in there?
Well, that’s a story best explained by someone who’s been dubbed “The Queen of Potpourri ''... One of the biggest bulk manufacturers of the stuff during its heyday: Laure Moutet.
Laure Manheimer: I was in the potpourri business from 1980 to 2006.
In the early-1970s, popular tastes - in smells - were starting to shift.
Laure Manheimer 35: So people got a little tired of Glade.
Glade commercial: I’d like to introduce you to Glade’s new air freshener, Sunny Lemon!
The environmental movement was taking off, and potpourri was becoming a fashionable and quote unquote “natural” trend for high-end consumers.
And the big cosmetics and fragrance companies wanted in on the heretofore rather niche potpourri game.
But the thing is… these companies already MADE perfume. They had the smell part taken care of.
[MUX]
Laure Manheimer 19: So they would come with the fragrance, they would come with the name, they would come with the fragrance, and they would tell me, make a potpourri!
Laure’s clients included big brands like -- Mary Kaye, Revlon, and Avon… and they’d come to her with very specific ideas in mind. Not only did they already have the perfume, they’d have the packaging, the branding... everything! Everything, that is, BUT the potpourri itself.
Now, potpourri had actually already shifted a bit -- from the fermented, wet potpourri of the Victorian era to a dried product, one easier to produce, transport, and sell.
But, it still wasn’t mass market.
Laure Manheimer 9: It was still what I call the class market.
[mux comes in]
Laure Manheimer: You know potpourri was 25$ a bag, and the flowers were real flowers, they were aromatic flowers. They were traditional flowers like lavender smell… and it was all very cute and expensive.
And so in order to scale up, and transform potpourri from a small batch garden craft to a big batch product - Laure had to solve a couple big challenges.
[mux]
So problem number one. The classical potpourri flowers - not just roses, but lavenders and chamomiles - they were too expensive.
Problem number two, they were too fragile.
Problem number three - the plants that DID smell good were actually interfering with the smells of the perfume.
Laure Manheimer: The top notes are all the citrus notes, the orange, the citrus… and you say mmmmm! So fresh. Forget about it. By the time you buy the potpourri, those are gone. We enjoyed it, not you.
[mux - “Selena Leica”, BDS]
Basically, if Laure wasn’t careful - customers could wind up getting the after-smell of the perfume… combined with the smell of musty dead flowers.
So she started trying to pair fragrances that could cover the smell of botanicals with botanicals that had almost no smell at all… a scheme that is practically the very opposite of Victorian potpourri.
The options in France were too expensive, Laure says… so she turned to her suppliers in India.
Laure Manheimer: We said, listen: we need botanicals that are available in large quantities, that are sustainable - even then - that do not break when they are blended and actually do not interfere very much with fragrances.
India has everything Laure was looking for and more.
Laure Manheimer: You have a lot of forest there, you have also a lot of beans, a lot of stuff coming out of the trees. And we also went to the foothills of the Himalayas to get all kind of pinecones.
But it wasn’t just the plants. In India, Laure could contract with local companies - companies that already had a network of rural workers helping to supply India’s herbal medicine industry.
Those workers could collect, dry, and even modify botanicals for potpourri on the cheap. Because it wasn’t just the smell and look of potpourri that was being changed… it was also the color.
Laure Manheimer: People became more demanding: can I have this Pantone number, and can I have this Pantone number, which required the botanicals to be bleached, bleached and died, so we had access to the pastel color….
The brands didn’t literally come to Laure with Pantone paint swatches, but people wanted the potpourri to match the packaging. And so Laure had her suppliers bleach and dye botanicals in order to color coordinate… like you would with a dress or sweater.
Potpourri was becoming an object of DESIGN... a product that reflected not the seasons, but the fashion seasons.
Laure Manheimer: And all that was done in India, because the labor is cheap, the land is fairly available where it was made, it was very convenient.
I reached out to a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew to ask whether the foreign ingredients being used for potpourri during this time were sustainable. He told me on the whole - yeah, they are, but he did have concerns about the labor. .
In India, rural workers like these have often been exploited or underpaid - and much of the potpourri boom came before the birth of the modern Fair Trade movement.
Laure sent me a few photos from India, of dyed plants laid on the ground in vast colorful carpets, workers in black rubber gloves dunking bowls of dried bean pods into bleach, or lotus leaves into yellow dye.
It wasn’t a factory per say… but this also wasn’t a cottage industry. And it’s wild to think that this operation is all for a product as quaint and unassuming as bags of potpourri. ….
[pause]
Regardless, even those Indian botanicals were not cheap enough to properly scale up. In the 1990s, Laure started taking on bigger and bigger orders - eventually, landing a contract to make and deliver 6 million bags of potpourri. Which is one for every human being in Denmark!
Laure Manheimer: As the demand for pot pourri ballooned, and went to Target, Walmart, and all those mass market company, we had to find something else to fill those potpourri and also to lower the price. And here came the wood cones and wood shaving.
Wood shavings - made from common pine harvested in Arkansas and North Carolina.
Laure Manheimer: If you cut it in certain way, it’s like butter, you know when you pull the butter with a knife and it curls? That’s a wood cone.
Essentially, we’re talking about the same stuff you put in the bottom of a hamster cage.
[MUX ]
And it was in this way, that the potpourri trend of the 20th century began to take its final form. Instead of bags filled with small bits and pieces from flowers and leaves, this potpourri was a handful of bulky but lightweight statement pieces popped into a bag.
Laure Manheimer: You would see a wood cone, you would see a curly pod, you would see a cotton pod, you would see some star anise, so it makes a very clean potpourri.
Laure - and others - had transformed potpourri into something that the Victorians wouldn’t even have recognized.
It was bleached, and dyed, a mix of imported fruit pods and shavings from pine trees.
Laure’s potpourri was mixed in stainless steel blenders so an adult human could fit inside. And to make it smell good, fragrance was sprayed into the blender with an honest-to-goodness paint-sprayer.
Laure Manheimer: The first time we cleaned the blender to change the fragrance, we sent a guy inside with alcohol, he came back completely drunk.
So that is the story of how potpourri bloomed - and transformed - during the boom of the 1980s and 90s… before rather suddenly drying up in the 2000s.
Laure Manheimer: And then the sticks came, the scented sticks, fitted well with the minimalist decors and kind of softer twee that most people have now and potpourri became again a specialty item.
So what about potpourri today?
Why am I talking about potpourri… in 2021?
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: The moss is real Earthy. And I’m telling you, real earthy!
TQ: Hey, I like the smell of dirt.
That’s comin’ up… after a break.
BREAK BREAK BREAK
Taylor Quimby: This is Outside/In, a show about the natural world and how we use it. And today I have been talking - as you know - about potpourri.
[mux]
What I’ve come to appreciate about potpourri, having reported this story, is that it isn't really anything in particular.
It’s just an idea - a mixture of things that may or may not belong together. It reminds me of those scented candles, “Warm summer breeze” or “Crisp fall night.” There are no hard and fast rules to potpourri. And maybe there never were.
The word that once referred to Portuguese stew, and then the smell of bathroom air freshener, is used today to refer to literally anything - a potpourri of poetry, a Jeopardy category for misfit questions.
And so in this half of the episode, I want to introduce you to three people that are making potpourri - or something like it - all their own.
And I’ll start with Autumn.
Autumn Anderson: You can use my whole name, it’s Autumn Hudnut Anderson, so how about that? It’s Hudnut. Can you believe that’s my maiden name?!
I found Autumn in one of the modern world’s biggest potpourri markets: Etsy. There are all kinds - straight up floral potpourris, potpourris with little holiday decorations… Autumn has some of the most interesting mixtures on the site: Tupelo Honey, and Maple Apple Bourbon.
You can’t help but notice trends. Based on the experience of scrolling Etsy, a lot of the potpourri being sold today seems to be made by white ladies in the American south. But Autumn, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, has been doing it longer than most of them.
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: 1979. Spellbound since 1979.
Taylor: That’s a long time - 42 years!
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: You aren’t supposed to add it up!
[mux]
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: I have made potpourri out of leather straps. Just everything. It’s really an obsession. It’s an obsession.
Taylor Quimby: What’s the weirdest thing you ever put in your dehydrator just to try it out?
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: Well, I dehydrated some… I shouldn’t say this, I’ll get in trouble, some bumblebees that were very annoying to us. Just a couple, just two. They weren’t pollinators, they were wood bees that eat your house. And dehydrated rather nicely.
Autumn says that the late 70s and 80s were potpourri heaven - but then suddenly the business dried up. She persisted - and continued trying to hawk her wares at the local renaissance fair in Upper Michigan. And she says, the past five years - even before the pandemic started - potpourri has been making a comeback.
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: Everybody would tease me like “oh you’re bringing out your potpourri jars again, nobody buys it, they don’t even know what it is. Everybody would look past it, but I just loved the stuff. So I’d bring it… We’d get a few sales, and that was about it. And they started buying more and more… And then they started buying gifts. And then I went online, and so now they buy me online. Now I have probably 26 varieties. I had to buy another whole ‘nother shop at the festival.
One of the most popular varieties she has, leans on a weird trend that I’ve seen lately -- moss in a bowl.
Autumn has been collecting moss and ferns and mushrooms and packaging it as “rain-forest” potpourri. And it’s killing it with the younger crowd.
Autumn Hudnut Anderson: I’m telling you I haven’t been able to make enough of it. People like it. It smells like dirt! Honest to god, it smells like dirt. I’ve got cedar and sweetgrass and I have this dirt scent. And the moss is just real earthy.
It’s got so much attention that Maker’s Mark had me make a whole bunch of potpourri for one of their ads. And they put their newest Maker’s Mark bottle in it and then sent it to their advertisers. And the first thing the lady wanted to know is if I could make it smell even more dank.
Taylor Quimby: Did you get any free whiskey?
Autumn: No! I didn’t!
Taylor Quimby: That’s a shame.
Autumn’s potpourri breaks the mold, so to speak. It reminds us that, while you might want to make sure you’re not collecting anything endangered, or poisonous - the no rules nature of potpourri is a type of freedom. If the stuffy bathroom bowls of the 80s weren’t your thing - it doesn’t mean there’s not a mix for you.
You are not your parent’s potpourri.
Ednita Tingle: It is in full regalia down here, we are full of dogwoods and maple trees in bloom and cherry blossoms and all of the goodness of the South...
So the next person I want to introduce you to is named Ednita Tingle.
Ednita is the owner of Roots and Blooms floral and gifts in Atlanta. I asked her to jump on a Zoom call with me way back when I was starting to do this story so she could give me some tips on drying stuff I got from my local florist.
And I want you to channel her absolute adoration for plants.
Ednita Tingle 8: If I could see that stem again. I think he gave you...
Taylor Quimby: Spiral eucalyptus?
Ednita Tingle : Oh wow, look at that! See, we don’t even have that down here! That particular variety… Look at that, I love it.
Because truth be told, Ednita Isn't a potpourri kind of person.
Ednita Tingle 26: You remember the turquoise blue potpourri, like what… why is that blue?
[mux - “Funk and Flash”, BDS]
But she is all about drying plants… getting more out of the same flowers you put in a vase… and watching how flowers cycle through the seasons. She’s even been teaching people how to take dried plants to make a sort of non-holiday wreath.
Ednita Tingle: Things like Yarrow, thistle, broomcorn… wait I have a list, I actually prepared myself, my best NPR. I’m such an NPR person! Anyway, I have a list.
So for her, potpourri doesn’t have to live in a bowl. It doesn’t have to be dyed or scented. Let those flowers turn golden - watch how they change.
Ednita Tingle: So what I encourage people to do is to go outside and kind of forage a little bit, what’s naturally present. And allowing those things to go through their life cycle a bit and see how they preserve.
You’ll see a way to bring outside in, no matter what season.
Taylor Quimby: I don’t know if you remember from my email, but the name of our show is actually Outside/In… so that was like a marketing tagline you just gave us.
Ednita Tingle: Yes! I’m here for the win! That’s awesome.
When we re-imagine the word potpourri, and understand it’s original intent, we can reimagine it today. Right? Make it new, make it fresh in a wreath. and it’ll do that magical thing that flowers do, which is just make you happy.
[mux swell]
And finally, I want to introduce you to someone who is making some old--fashioned potpourri made - the dried kind, not fermented - from backyard roses plucked and packaged as a pandemic side gig.
Paulus: You get seven months into a global pandemic without work and you start saying, well, perhaps we have to adapt.
This is Paulus. He’s a cabaret performer in England, somewhat famous for his role as the tough judge in a British reality TV talent show.
[Clip of singing from TV show]
It’s called All Together Now - and the gimmick is that there are 100 judges, each one from a different creative discipline. During every performance, judges stand to indicate their approval. Paulus rarely gets out of his chair.
TV host: Well done. If my maths are correct 97% of you liked it but not everyone did. Paulus! C’mon, Paulus. You didn’t stand up for that and most of the 100 did. Why did you not stand up?
Paulus: No, I didn’t stand up. Not that it wasn’t good, Jodie. It was good. But for me, there were too many trills, and licks and flicks. Didn’t work for me.
TV hose: Didn’t work for Paulus, but not much does.
I get the impression Paulus is actually something of a softie - he says the show producers encouraged his role as hard to impress.
Paulus: We know that these things are a game show, and there’s a game to play. And I played the game, just like the contestants did.
Like a lot of performers, Paulus had a really hard time during the pandemic.
Paulus: Like thousands of other freelance creatives, I lost thousands of pounds worth of work overnight.
And wasn’t just financial hardship. Paulus is the kind of person who lives for stagecraft. He didn’t just lose income, he lost some of his sense of purpose.
Paulus: You know, I haven’t had a round of applause in a really long time. I’m sad to say that it’s something I… well I think it’s something I need, or have needed, it’s definitely something I expect, and it’s very weird without it. I know that none of that is very healthy or adult, by the way, but it’s just the truth.
And during the tough months of Covid lock downs, which it’s worth reminding were a lot tougher in the UK - he started selling potpourri, made from the David Austen roses he grows in his garden.
Paulus: So basically, my house is now covered, full of buckets… I hope you can see this, I know you can’t hear it…. Buckets full of roses! Different varieties. They go in the buckets once they’ve dried...
Now Paulus knows potpourri is a bit cheesy… But he’s a cabaret performer.. And sometimes cheese is part of the act.
I guess the 80s was the last time in the U.K. that potpourri was cool.
But it’s more than that. For him, there’s a certain kind of belonging in potpourri. Paulus grew up not knowing how to talk to his peers - in school, at the bus stop. And instead he made friends with the older ladies who ran his local amateur theater club.
[mux]
Paulus: So I just hung out with older ladies, and cups of tea and scones and things like pot pourri and raffles and things like that, they were my life. And there was a comfort to these people, these older people that I didn't get from people my own age.
And this past year - he spread that comfort to his fans, during a time where he couldn’t perform the way he used to. It was a way to make a little money, but more than that - it was a way to feel needed. Something to replace - momentarily - the sound of applause.
Paulus: So yeah, I have felt loved, I have felt loved by complete strangers from different corners of the globe, and if they want to show their love by buying my potpourri, even if that’s just a pity purchase, I feel that love and I take that love and I thank them for it.
[mux]
Back in the “rotten pot” days of potpourri, it was especially organic. I don’t mean organically farmed, I just mean that it was literally decaying. It was funky. And, it was slow. You tended it, like a campfire. Throw in a few more petals here, some salt there, give it a stir every now and again.
The people who made potpourri were brewing something up that seemed to have a purpose.
The potpourri of the 80s - that had a purpose too, but it was something else. An aesthetic. An object of fashion.
And that - that’s what went out of style at the turn of the century.
Today, it seems like people are taking what they want from the past - and making something different. Something new. Now, everybody gets to decide what potpourri is, and what it means to them.
I think I prefer to think about it like Paulus does. Potpourri as a vehicle for love, or joy. Something that makes you want to stop and smell the roses - regardless of just how fragrant they actually are.
Taylor Quimby: Justine, I want you to have that little jar of potpourri.
Justine Paradis: Really? This is for me?
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, it’s for you. It’s a gift.
Justine Paradis: Thanks Taylor.
Taylor Quimby: You're welcome. I’m really so glad you like it, because I was going to give it to you either way.
Justine Paradis: I would have to be like, uhh gift horse.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. “Thanks!” In the trash.
Justine Paradis: No, it's really nice.
[theme]
CREDITS
This episode of Outside/In was produced by Taylor Quimby.
Edited by me, Justine Paradis.
With additional editing support from Felix Poon, Jessica Hunt, and Rebecca Lavoie.
Our executive producer is Rebecca Lavoie.
Special thanks to all of the NHPR folks who dished for our potpourri memory montage: Nick Capodice, Josh Rogers, Emily Quirk, Patricia McLaughlin, Rick Ganley, and - again - Rebecca Lavoie.
Also special thanks to Dr. Rosalyn LaPier, Mark Nesbit, Kimberly Marshall, and Esther Marie Jackson.
Our theme music is by Brake Master Cylinder.
Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions, and Ben Nestor.
Don't forget we’re a production of a public radio station. So please consider donating to support the show. We prefer monetary donations, which you can provide at outside in radio dot org, but you can also express your love with a handmade jar of potpourri.
Outside-in is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.