FAQ

What is the history of Botanicus?
The history of Botanicus goes back to 1992. You can find out more in the section Botanicus History.

Why are Botanicus products special?
Following principles proven by centuries-old wisdom, traditional style, manual production, technical perfection, modern equipment and the latest scientific information – this is the foundation of the success of Botanicus.
There is one more thing: inspiration from the world of plants, enthusiasm of people, agricultural know-how, knowledge of gardening, chemistry, languages, clinical physiotherapy, herbs and production technologies in combination with more than thousands of plant species of Western as well as Eastern medicine, aromatherapy and culinary.

What is the difference between the brand Botanicus and Hortus botanicus & apothicus?
Botanicus is in other words "everything of vegetative origin". The combination of the words Hortus botanicus can express the significance of the gardens because HORTUS BOTANICUS in Latin means botanical garden. By adding apothicus we complete the entire "circle" of our company. From the French  "apothicairerie" or monastic pharmacy, we can describe our business as "Hortus botanicus & apothicus", which represents botanical and herbal gardens and herbal and natural products that originate in the gardens.

Do you import or grow raw material used in the production?
Raw material which can be grown in our climate comes from the BIO gardens. This material can be further processed for the production of extracts, elixirs, macerates or leaches. You can find exotic material in our products as well, they are mainly vegetative and essential oils. We try to choose the best quality when importing this material and to observe the principles of fair-trade when purchasing the products www.fairtrade.cz

Are the Historical Centre and the gardens part of your company?
Yes, definitely. They are an integral part of our company. The two activities complement each other and provide products for our major activity, which is the production of cosmetics.

What type of visitors come to the Historical Centre and the gardens?
Our most frequent visitors are families with children. Of course we create a programme and Saturday events for this target group. Another welcome group of visitors are senior citizens. They take a great interest into the gardens. We work closely with schools and therefore another significant group is school children. Would you like to come? We would be happy to welcome you, just contact us.

Who are your customers?
This question is difficult to answer. Cosmetics are, of course, mainly for women. In our case for women aged 25 to 50. However, there are other age groups among our customers. Our products are often bought as a gift, therefore men also shop in our store.

Is Botanicus a Czech company?
The company was founded as a Czech company with foreign capital input. Since 2005, the company is purely Czech owned. Fore more details about our history go to the Botanicus History section.

Are any of your products BIO?
Our BIO products can be divided into three basic groups. First, there are products which contain raw material grown in our gardens – fresh herbs, extracts, elixirs and dried material. This material is further used for the production of BIO food such as jam, chutney, syrup, honey, etc. All our cosmetic products contain some raw material in BIO quality. We also sell a set of ten BIO soaps with CPK BIO label. We are currently  testing other products, which would fulfil the criteria.

Are Botanicus products really natural, what do they actually contain?
To explain the term natural cosmetics with just a few words is not easy. You can say that in Czech Republic natural cosmetics are products with CPK label. A whole range of our products has this label. However, other products produced by Botanicus contain natural substances, often extracts or parts of plants from our herb gardens. They contain a high percentage of these natural raw materials, and therefore must be preserved using other preservatives than those permitted by CPK. Some products, such as foam or BOTANICUS shampoo, are even difficult to produce without these preserving agents.