Where beauty begins

We are farmers. We’re up to our elbows in dirt, obsessing about weather reports and analyzing the pH of the rainfall. Not exactly the image that comes to mind when you think of a beauty company, but then, Weleda's not your average beauty company.

At Weleda, beauty isn't something that's made in a lab; it's something that's cultivated right from the earth. Carefully. Lovingly. And certainly without pesticides or chemicals. Those things aren't beautiful to us.

For nearly 90 years now, we've demonstrated that nature can nurture and the earth can heal. And so we grow our organic roses so you can glow youthfully. We gather golden arnica blossoms to tend to bruises and sprains. We harvest acres of Biodynamic calendula for the comfort and health of newborn babies – and to inspire confidence in their cautious new parents.

We may plow and harvest 135 acres of Biodynamic gardens around the planet. But what we cultivate, really, is beauty.

Our ingredients

We believe nature offers everything we need to create effective beauty and wellness products. Look through our list of ingredients and you won't find one unpronounceable synthetic compound or one toxic chemical.

You will find flowers and herbs. Fruit extracts. Clays. Roots. Minerals. Each one carefully selected to heal, protect and beautify, to work with your body’s own healing systems, and do it all gently and effectively.

It's all about nature supporting people supporting nature.

Growing our products

It starts with soil

Beautiful products start with beautiful soil. We keep chemicals and pesticides out of our Biodynamic gardens, because the quality of our soil will reflect the quality of our products. Even our partners seek out the most gentle, safe farming methods available.

The harvest

Because life nurtures life, all of our plants are processed immediately after they're harvested. Our dedicated farmers work with great care to clean the roots, peel the bark and hand-select the best blossoms and leaves. Some plants are kept whole – to treat the whole being – while others are separated into components like roots, seeds, leaves or fruits, each to care for a specific skin-care or medical need.

Nourishment released

Grinding, squeezing or cutting fresh ingredients releases their nourishing properties while they're most active and aromatic. We then combine this active plant blend with a solution such as organic alcohol or spring water to create an organic extract called a tincture.

A tincture carries an "imprint," or life message, of the plant, and herbal or mineral tinctures are powerful enough to have been used around the world for centuries to treat medical needs.

Purity and protection

Tinctures are an essential component of every product we make, but first we subject them to strict, pharmaceutical-quality controls. In fact, we frequently exceed stringent European laws and certification standards for the personal care and pharmaceutical industries. We wouldn't settle for anything less.

A beautiful result

The tinctures can now be blended with other extracts and raw materials to create the formulations that you know as your favorite soap, moisturizing facial cream, soothing eye drops, or gentle baby oil.

Our Biodynamic gardens

Biodynamics: Not a trend, a way of life

Organics aren't some newfangled trend we're jumping on. More like a trend we helped to establish. We set up one of the very first Biodynamic gardens all the way back in the 1920s to provide us with the natural, effective raw materials we needed to make our products the way we knew they should be made.

In these gardens, flowers thrived in the rich, balanced soil, bees buzzed from blossom to blossom, weeds were attended to with natural solutions and gardeners gently trod on the earth, nurturing every living creature. The result: the purest plants, flowers and fruits grown on earth.

Remarkably, little has changed in Weleda’s gardens since more than 80 years ago. Although, indeed, we’ve grown a bit since then.

Today we have 135 acres of these Biodynamic gardens in Germany – the Weleda Biodynamic Medicinal Plant Gardens are the largest of their kind in Europe – with more in Switzerland, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil and New Zealand, collectively growing more than 300 healing plants and flowers. That’s a whole lot of Biodynamic goodness.

We believe that beauty comes from within – and without. There is power in the soil that we till, the organic, Biodynamic and wild plants that we harvest and the essential oils that we extract. So you can be assured we take excellent care of all of them.

In fact, our gardens are like our babies; that's why you'll never find chemicals, pesticides or other scary things anywhere near our crops.

Pure farming practices make for pure, effective Weleda products. Just the way they've always been.

A brief history of Biodynamic farming

In the early 20th century, farmers noticed a decline in the health of their crops and livestock. They turned to renowned philosopher, natural scientist and Weleda founder, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, for help. He, in turn, created the principles that now define Biodynamic agriculture and the entire Weleda philosophy.

Dr. Steiner described each farm as a complete, self-sustaining organism. The soil was "alive," and if kept in balance, it had the ability to give life to healthy plants. Composting, fertilization and pest control were to be achieved using natural farm resources, and chemicals or growth hormones were strictly forbidden. Farmers were urged to study the natural rhythms of the sun, moon and planets to provide guidance on planting, crop rotation and harvesting.

In other words, take good care of your farm, and it will take good care of you too.

Biodynamic farming turned out to be a great success, yielding crops of incredible purity and potency and helping to spawn the organic movement that’s so popular today.

We see it as the way farming was meant to be. Which is why we continue to employ its methods as we cultivate beauty around the world.

Top of page