Maker Chatti Brown Turns to Nature to Create Apothecary Products and Promote Healing

An art therapist by training, Chatti Brown knows firsthand the healing effects of both nature and the practice of creation. So it’s no surprise that most days, you’ll find her sowing seeds and tending blooms in her Wheat Ridge garden or creating botanical-infused bath soaps and body butters at her home workshop.

Brown’s love of plants and mindful practices took root during her childhood. She spent the first two years of her life at a refugee camp in Thailand, to which her family had fled to escape the unstable conditions in Cambodia after the genocide by the Khmer Rouge. The family immigrated to Southern California in 1984, and at their first house with a yard, Brown’s mother planted reminders of Southeast Asia—limes, sugarcanes, taro—alongside Brown’s father’s rose bushes and hydrangea. “I remember people walking by and wanting to pick the flowers,” she says.

Brown moved to Colorado in 2006 to study art therapy at Naropa University—and after a brief stint out of state, she returned in 2013. That’s when she began growing her own herbs and infusing them into homemade soaps and balms that she creates using a time-intensive cold process she learned via YouTube videos. Soon, she started selling her custom creations at craft fairs and farmer’s markets under the brand Remy & Rose, named after her two cats. Now, Remy & Rose apothecary products—including hand-dipped beeswax taper candles, half-moon bath bars, and jars of body salve infused with chamomile and calendula Brown grows herself—can be found at Colorado boutiques including Conifer Shop and HeyDay, and online, where a growing fan base of cold-pressed-soap devotees and natural-deodorant converts stocks their vanities directly.

In addition to her line of apothecary products, Brown also sells seasonal bouquets from her flower garden, which she planted last spring in honor of her father. “My dad passed away at the beginning of 2019, and I don’t think I had really processed his death,” she says, so she turned to dahlias, marigolds, and lisianthuses, “because my dad loved beautiful things, and he really loved taking care of himself.”

Each aspect of the maker’s growing business speaks to her fondness for home, family, working the land, and personal healing. “I always want to be doing something with my hands,” she says. “To me, that’s recharging.”

What’s In Chatti’s Garden?

Calendula

How She Uses It: Infused in olive oil and applied to small scrapes, minor burns, and eczema, or mixed with jojoba oil and applied to a dry scalp.

Nettles

How She Uses It: Dried in tea to help with inflammation, high blood sugar, and low iron levels, or in a hair rinse with rosemary, which is high in silica and helps keep hair shiny.

Yarrow

How She Uses It: In bouquets and wreaths or crushed into a poultice and applied to clean wounds to reduce inflammation and help stop bleeding.