Medicinal Plants: Growing Healing Herbs for the Home Garden
Ready to start or expand your herb garden? Here we’re introducing medicinal, edible, and cultivation profiles for three cherished healing plants: elderberry, lemon balm, and rose.
Medicinal Herbs
Medicinal Herb Gardening for Beginners
I love herbal medicine but I’ve never grown herbs—how do I begin an herb garden?
Have you or someone you know been asking this question lately? Then read on for inspirational and empowering steps for growing medicinal herbs at home—we give even the brownest thumb enough fertilizer to succeed in medicinal herb gardening!
The Medicine That Grows In-Between: Lamb’s Quarters, Plantain, and Red Clover
Your garden wants to feed you—not just with the cultivated plants you tuck into the soil, but with a profusion of wild greens and herbs that spring up of their own generous accord. These feral guests surpass domestic veggies in nutrition and are often brimming with medicine, which makes them worthy of our attention and care in cultivated spaces.
Violet Springtime Fairy Vinegar: A Mineral-Rich Spring Tonic
When violets begin to pop up in the spring landscape, it’s our cue that a vernal promenade of mineral-rich, cleansing herbs is in full swing. Violet keeps excellent company—look for herbs like chickweed, cleavers, dandelion, plantain, and stinging nettles when violet’s heart-shaped leaves and purple blooms appear on the scene.
The Folklore and Medicine of Witch Hazel
Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana, Hamamelidaceae) is our kinky, golden-star flower shrub or small tree that blooms in cold weather, when all other flowers are absent from the landscape.
Cultivating Woodland Herbs: How to Grow Native Forest Medicinals
Why grow native woodland herbs? Growing our own medicine—in any setting—creates an intimate connection with healing plants. There are some important environmental reasons for cultivating rare woodland medicinals as well. Further, many of the woodland herbs are easy to cultivate, as compared to our garden herbs.
11 Tonic Herbs for Stress and Anxiety
Because so many of us experience chronic stress, we also require chronic (aka tonic) support. Tonic herbs are remedies that can be taken safely over a long period of time.
The Healing Benefits of Gotu Kola: An Edible and Medicinal Herb
Gotu kola (Centella asiatica, Apiaceae) has been a legendary herb in India and China for over two thousand years, where it’s considered to be one of the best herbs for promoting clarity, focus, and a peaceful, calm nature.
How to Grow Culinary Herbs in Containers: 10 Healing Plants for Your Porch or Patio
How to Grow Culinary Herbs in Containers: 10 Healing Plants for Your Porch or Patio Written by Meghan Gemma and Juliet Blankespoor Photography by Juliet Blankespoor Lush, aromatic plants gracing the gateways to your home—porch steps, patios, pathways, and windowsills—are the ultimate welcome mat. In particular, potted culinary and medicinal herbs bring a little something [...]
Growing Medicinal Herbs in Pots: 10 Healing Plants for Your Container Garden
When I first began foraging my own food and medicine, I focused on a particular array of plentiful, generous, and nourishing plants—the wild weeds, the common flora, and the invasives. These plants are some of our most superb medicinal allies and nutrient-dense wild foods. And these feral botanicals continue to be my main squeezes: non-native, “weedy” medicinals and wild foods are the most sustainable options out there.