Bringing the Garden In

Musings on the generous geranium. As the evenings draw in, it makes its last stand. Here is how to keep a little of it indoors all winter.

There is a particular kind of October light: low and honeyed, slanting across the garden at four in the afternoon, catching the last of the geraniums in their terracotta pots. They have flowered since late spring, faithful through the heat of August and the first damp mornings of September, and they will keep going, stubbornly, until the first hard frost tells them otherwise.

It is the most generous plant in the garden. And it is about to be the only thing out there still putting on a show.

Autumn is gorgeous, but it is also getting cold. The golden days are shorter now, and for anyone who feels the chill (the woolly-pully-in-July contingent, you know who you are), carrying a cup of tea out to the garden bench is losing its charm. The outdoors is still beautiful. We are simply admiring it from the window.

So bring it in.

Not with another candle or a vase of shop-bought stems, but with the thing you reach for every single day. The spray on the kitchen counter is the most-used scent in most homes, and it rarely smells of anything you would choose. Swap it, and wiping down the worktop becomes something closer to a walk through the garden.

Gentle Geranium

Our refillable multi-purpose cleaning spray is built around that late-season bloom. Floral geranium sits at its heart, lifted by bright bergamot and grounded in warm, woody cedarwood: green and rosy at first, then softer and deeper as it settles. It is scented only with 100% pure essential oils, the way a good bath oil would be, and it smells, quite simply, delightful.

It also works. One 20 ml refill, mixed with tap water in your own bottle, lifts the day's spills and fingerprints from worktops, tables and splashbacks, with no harsh acids or abrasives. It is kind to your surfaces, and kind to the planet: no new plastic bottle, and no water shipped across the country. The bottle stays. Only the refill travels.

The spray on the kitchen counter is the most-used scent in your home. It might as well smell like a garden.

How to bring it home

Pour one 20 ml refill of Gentle Geranium into your spray bottle, top up with 250 ml of tap water and give it a gentle shake.

Then put the kettle on, look out at the last of the geraniums, and let them have the garden. You have brought the best part inside.

Shop Gentle Geranium refills, or find them on Amazon with Prime delivery. Six-packs with both scents arrive in November.