The current increasing interest in the nutritional and therapeutic value of plants and herbs has motivated the nuns of the Holy Monastery at Mikrokastro to invest in this trend by exploiting the herbs growing wild in the surroundings and by cultivating many of them in the Monastery’s gardens.
Since about ten years ago, the Sisters have been preoccupied with collecting and processing the herbs using the latest technological aids, keeping to the necessary hygiene and conducting thorough microbiological tests complying with the Greek National Organization for Medicines.
The Workshop "Herbal Garden"
The outcome of this effort is a meticulously created variety of products made from pure natural, hygienic materials: a line of ointments, soaps, skin cleansers and products for personal hygiene and care.
The supply of the herbs needed is secured by the hard work put into the Monastery’s gardens by the Sisters, which justifies the name given to the Monastery’s workshop.
A main policy and aim of the workshop “Herbal Garden” of the Holy Monastery of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Mikrokastro, is the maximum possible exploitation of the herbs either grown in the Monastery’s gardens or, picked from the nearby mountainous region by the sisters. For this reason, all the oil extracts used as main basic materials in products are conscientiously prepared with strict obedience to legal standards and regulations as well as expertise. More and more people appreciate and prefer natural products over standardized and industrial ones. The main reason is the lack of confidence in the quality of the raw materials of industrial products. Many petroleum-derived and synthetic ingredients cause skin diseases, allergies and other serious illnesses in their unsuspecting consumers.
The herbs are used either freshly harvested or recently dried depending on the use. The workshop also exploits, at the maximum, the extra virgin olive oil extracted from the annual harvest of the Monastery’s olive trees and thus the unique quality of the products, which is the essential prerequisite, is achieved. As it is known, olive oil is rich in antioxidants, such as polyphenols. These act beneficially not only as a nutrient, but also by participating in the composition of natural personal care products, such as soap.
Hence the unique quality of the extracts is achieved with the above combination of aromatic plants and their maximum utilization, and the simultaneous use of olive oil, which is the basis for the natural products prepared by the Monastery.
