Here in Galway, we have just crossed into Lúnasa, the old Irish marker of the harvest season.
In the traditional Irish calendar, Lúnasa began on 1 August. It was a time of gatherings, fairs, pilgrimage and the first acknowledgement of what the year’s work had produced. It feels like an especially fitting moment to gather together everything that has been growing at the Natural Perfume Academy since our last newsletter.
And there has been quite a harvest.
New students have arrived from several parts of the world. Three students reached major completion milestones. Juliana Cruz’s practical business course welcomed its first learners. Our latest Scent Panel explored the extraordinary complexity of vetiver, three substantial new research articles were published, and work on the Botanical Tincture Evaluation Training Kit moved into its next practical stage.
An Irish Academy with a Global Community
The Natural Perfume Academy is based in Galway on the west coast of Ireland, but our classrooms have never been confined by geography.
Our Moodle community now includes more than 1,700 registered members, with students, graduates and scent lovers joining us from across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, North and South America.
Being based in Ireland is not simply an address attached to the Academy. Ireland was identified in early 2025 as the world’s most educated country by degree attainment, with 52.4% of adults aged between 25 and 64 holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. A ranking can never do the educational work for us, of course, but it reflects the wider respect for learning, independent thought and knowledge that we hope to carry into everything NPA does.
Our educational inheritance is older than rankings too, such as, storytelling, close observation of nature, seasonal awareness, practical craft and knowledge passed from one person to another. Natural perfumery belongs very comfortably within that tradition.
A Growing Australian NPA Community
July brought a particularly lovely wave of new connections from Australia.
Juliana Cruz welcomed the first Australian learner to the English edition of Build Your Artisan Business Online. Several new Australian students also joined the Diploma and Fast Track Diploma, bringing backgrounds in horticulture, artisan business, niche fragrance, independent formulation and years of self-directed study.
A generous recommendation from NPA alumnus and fragrance historian Dimitri Dimitriadis also led an experienced Australian perfumer to the Academy. Dimitri’s continued support means a great deal to us, and it is wonderful to see one person’s experience of NPA opening a door for somebody else.
Read more about Dimitri Dimitriadis and his NPA journey
This new Australian group also brought Holly Simpson to mind. Holly has been part of the NPA story for many years and helped us develop practical supplier guidance for Australian students long before our present course network existed.
Holly, should this newsletter reach you, the path you helped to mark is still being walked. Thank you.
Congratulations to Our Latest Graduates
July was a very special month for student achievement.
Two students successfully completed the CPD-Certified Natural Perfumery Diploma, while another completed the Advanced Perfumers Workshop, presenting four finished perfumes for professional evaluation.
One final perfume travelled all the way from Singapore to Galway for assessment. That small parcel represented months of study, formulation, revision and creative persistence before it ever reached Ireland.
We will not publish students’ names or personal work without their permission, but we did not want these achievements to pass unnoticed.
Behind every completed perfume is an enormous amount of invisible work, such as, dilutions, evaluation notes, failed trials, reformulations, waiting, smelling again and learning when to add, subtract or finally stop.
To all our latest graduates, we are enormously proud of you.
New Podcast, The Many Faces of Vetiver
The latest Natural Perfume Academy Scent Panel is now available. Subscribe on your favourite listening channel by clicking on this link and then selecting your platform.
Vetiver in Perfumery | Scent Panel Ep. 3 with Ane Walsh
In this 47-minute episode, Ruth Ruane and Ane Walsh open a collection of aged vetiver materials and explore just how different one root can become according to its origin, soil, extraction, age and the way the perfumer handles it.
The conversation moves through thick Brazilian wild vetiver, creamy and transparent Haitian material, traditional Indian ruh khus, Bourbon vetiver from Réunion and vetiver from Suriname.
It also explores vetiver heart, traditional attars, distillation, dilution, sustainability, soil protection and the way vetiver can shape the architecture of a perfume rather than merely sitting underneath it as a conventional “base note”.
Listen to Vetiver in Perfumery
The episode is also available through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and the other main podcast platforms.
Visit the Natural Perfume Academy YouTube channel
Three New Olfactory Studies to Read
Our Substack has become a home for the longer investigations that cannot be compressed into a social-media caption.
Three substantial pieces have been published since the beginning of July.
Your Perfume Is Muddy. Here’s Why.
Why do several beautiful natural materials sometimes lose all clarity when combined?
This paper explores the difference between richness and congestion, how masking and mixture suppression affect perception, why equal quantities do not mean equal olfactory strength, and how subtraction can sometimes repair a perfume more effectively than another addition.
Read Your Perfume Is Muddy. Here’s Why.
Scented Ground
Before fragrance was enclosed in bottles, it was underfoot.
This wide-ranging study explores strewing herbs, rush-covered floors, flower carpets, sacred processional routes and the ways humans; and even birds, bees, ants and other animals; use botanical materials to alter the atmosphere and ecology of the spaces they inhabit.
The Great Violet Illusion
The violet flower is almost impossible to capture, violet leaf smells green rather than powdery, and the familiar violet of perfumery is one of fragrance history’s most ingenious acts of reconstruction.
This article explores violet through mythology, history, botany, extraction, chemistry and human perception.
Read The Great Violet Illusion
Subscribe to NPA’s Olfactory Adventures & Inspiration on Substack
Ane Walsh’s Sunday Reading Archive
For our Portuguese-speaking community, Ane Walsh’s Sunday readings of Perfumaria Botânica Para O Perfumista continue to build into a valuable educational archive.
These relaxed live readings allow participants to move through the book gradually with Ane. A once-off payment of €15 gives access to the available recordings and future additions to the series while the archive remains available.
Explore Leituras de Domingo com Ane Walsh
Juliana’s Course Welcomes Its First Learners
When we last wrote, Build Your Artisan Business Online by Juliana Cruz had just opened in English and Portuguese.
Since then, the course has welcomed its first Portuguese pilot learner and its first student in the English edition, all the way from Western Australia.
That feels important because the course was built for a very real group of people, such as, perfumers, soap makers, natural cosmetic formulators, candle makers, artists and other independent creators who know how to make something beautiful but feel overwhelmed by everything involved in building a functioning online business around it.
Juliana leads learners through business naming and registration, domains and professional email, product photography, pricing, financial organisation, sales channels and customer care.
It is practical, approachable and designed to help independent makers become less dependent on other people for the everyday running of their businesses.
Explore Build Your Artisan Business Online
Explore the Portuguese edition
The Botanical Tincture Training Kit Moves Forward
Work has also continued on the Botanical Tincture Evaluation Training Kit developed through our project with ISIPCA intern Germannia Mira.
The project is designed to help students evaluate tinctures in a disciplined and repeatable way, for example, observing intensity, volatility, aromatic family, development on the blotter and the relationship between botanical identity and olfactory character.
The framework, teaching material and initial botanical series have now been developed. We have moved into the practical sourcing stage, looking for suitable tinctures and the supporting safety and specification documents required for an educational kit.
The finished materials will be supplied as small coded samples for guided organoleptic study; not as therapeutic preparations; and accompanied by exercises that encourage students to smell, compare, describe and record what they actually perceive.
This project has taken longer than originally expected, largely because we would rather develop something genuinely useful than rush an attractive idea into an inadequate course.
One Autumn Equinox Scholarship
The next NPA scholarship is planned for the autumn equinox on 23 September 2026.
NPA offers four competitive scholarship opportunities during the year, connected with the equinoxes and solstices. Each successful applicant receives full tuition for the CPD-Certified Natural Perfumery Diploma, with the possibility of additional support towards an approved materials kit.
The scholarship path begins with Walking the Kyphi Path.
Applicants must enrol in the €80 course, source their basic materials and complete the work with care, initiative and creativity. Completing the Kyphi course does not guarantee a scholarship; it gives the Academy a fair and practical way to evaluate commitment and independent working ability.
To be considered for the September award, completed scholarship work should reach us by 15 September 2026.
Read about Walking the Kyphi Path and the scholarship process
The September equinox occurs in Ireland at 1:05 am on Wednesday, 23 September 2026.
Perhaps You Have Been Preparing for This for Years
Many people arrive at the Academy believing they are starting from nothing.
Then they begin writing about the gardens, forests, kitchens, incense, flowers, books, perfume bottles and unexplained scent memories that have followed them throughout their lives.
They realise they have already spent years paying attention.
The role of the Diploma is to give that attention structure; olfactory training, material knowledge, safety, accurate recording, formulation, evaluation and the guidance needed to turn an idea into a coherent finished perfume.
The CPD-Certified Diploma is online and self-paced, with lifetime access and tutor support. Students can begin at any time, and an accelerated 16-week route is available for suitably experienced applicants.
Explore the CPD-Certified Natural Perfumery Diploma
View all currently available NPA courses
As we enter the harvest season here in Ireland, while friends in Australia are still moving through winter, we are reminded that an international community never stands in only one season at a time.
Some members are beginning. Some are gathering materials. Some are rebuilding abandoned ideas. Some are completing the perfume they once wondered whether they would ever be capable of making.
Wherever you are in that cycle, thank you for being part of the Natural Perfume Academy.
Warm regards,
Ruth Ruane
Natural Perfume Academy
Galway, Ireland
Learn. Create. Inspire.