In the Lush Kitchen at 29 High Street, Poole, there are many skincare products in development. Some will make it as far as being tried out by our human testers and others will even make it to the shops and to the pages of Lush Times. Something they all have in common is that they will be made with new combinations of fresh herbs, fruit, vegetables and natural minerals. If you look through a guide to wild flowers you will see quite a number of our ingredients mentioned there because one source of our inspiration is the medicinal plants used by herbalists before their traditions were lost with the rise of modern medicine. We use herbal methods from other traditions around the world too.

One thing you'll never see on a Lush skincare product is a claim that we've developed a flashy new molecule that will magically make you look younger. (If you want to look younger get plenty of sleep, drink enough water, eat fruit and vegetables and give up smoking.) There are some products that will tighten up your skin and make you look younger for a few hours -see our Bio Fresh page for face masks which will do just that - but there is nothing that has a permanent effect and we don't try to pretend that there is.

What we are doing is making products that are really good for your skin in the long term. Lush products use fresh, herbal ingredients in significant strengths that will really have an effect (not in miniscule quantities just so it can get a mention on the label and take advantage of the current trend for putting one herb in a bottle full of synthetics and calling it 'natural'). There is enough in nature to help us to keep our skin healthy; there is no real need for new molecules. (Hence there is no real need for animal testing of cosmetics ingredients.) We spend time in our lab (it's really a kitchen with a couple of Bunsen burners) finding ways to make fresher and fresher products with fewer preservatives; it's forward progress taking advantage of the tremendous wealth that the natural world has already given us.

We get a tiny bit tired of people telling us that our cleansers don't look like cleansers. Actually, we think you'll find that this is what cleansers are supposed to look like! Once you've tried them you'll be unlikely to use creamy stuff from a plastic bottle no matter how expensive it is. Often in life money buys you quality. In our case a very reasonable amount of money buys you the result of decades of expertise in herbal skincare - some funny looking stuff which takes excellent care of your skin and makes it feel clean and lovely, soft and special.

A few years ago when we first started to make moisturizers we would ask ourselves, "Shall we use that lovely oil?" Then we'd think, "No, it's way too expensive; we'll use this other one instead because it's nearly as good." These days, now that we're in our forties and fifties and time is taking its course, we say to ourselves, "Hang the expense, we're having the best there is for our faces; if we must economize we'll make do with last year's handbag." Since we started Lush, many more lovely organic oils have become available in sufficient quantities for us to use them. Now that we're a bit bigger we can often buy direct from the growers too, which means that we can bring you the loveliest moisturizers at astonishingly fair prices. So now you know why we've brought you two new moisturizers. We really need them ourselves, but you can share.

It's a beauty myth that nothing can penetrate the skin. It's often spouted by women with dried up faces which look like a chammy leather that has polished the car a few times. Worse still, it's spouted by their pseudo-scientific husbands who don't let them buy moisturizer. It's not the case. Have you heard the myth about rubbing garlic on the soles of your feet and smelling it on your breath 20 minutes later? That's one's true. Essential oils do penetrate the skin and do affect the way it feels. One way for an instant effect is to use a toner and ours are the nicest we've ever come across. If you're still not sure, then use it for removing your cleanser residue and get the other benefits at the same time.

Fair enough, if you want to throw another product in the bath - one which isn't made with the nicest ingredients - then you probably won't come to any harm. If you're washing your hair with a cosmetic packed with synthetics, you're going to wash it off pretty quickly and there's not much to worry about. But your face? The part of your body which expresses all your emotions, which has to deal with wind, rain and sun and still cheer you up when it looks at you every morning in the mirror? Surely you'd want to take the best care of that? The effects of all the products we use for cleansing, toning and particularly for moisturizing are truly written all over our faces. This is why we put more time into working on our facial skincare products than everything else put together.

It's why we've taken a long time to bring you our two new moisturizers and our toner.

Please do read the ingredients lists; we are very proud of them. Compare them with other manufacturers' ingredients (get out the magnifying glass). Ours are more beautiful and have fewer lines. The same goes for your faces.

We have lots more wonderful skin care.