Discover the best times of the year for growing specific healing herbs and also when and how to forage for wild medicine, such as water mint, St John’s Wort, hawthorn berries and rosehips. Recipes are included for how to use these herbs, along with folklore stories from herb wives and hedge witches, the meanings behind their names and the history of how these natural medicines were discovered.

There are plenty of tips for how to create your own medicinal herb garden, even with just a few pots, along with a biodynamic guide for sowing, planting and harvesting.

Including detailed hand-drawn line illustrations to help deepen your understanding, The Herb Almanac is the perfect gift for any nature lover.

CONTENTS INCLUDES:
Introduction
Including using herbs as seasonally appropriate remedies and tonics, an overview of herbs in folklore, wild medicine, magic, superstition, ritual, tradition and literature and herbs in religion and floriography (the language of flowers)

Gathering and Using Herbs
Including safe, legal and successful foraging, a brief introduction to growing your own herbs and preparing, drying and preserving herbs

Witches’ Brews: Poisonous Plants
Including an overview of herbs with interesting stories that cannot be easily used, e.g. wormwood, hemlock and mandrake

Herb Encyclopedia
Including detailed information on over 50 different herbs

A ‘herbal’ is essentially a book that contains a list of plants with notes on each plant’s identification and uses. They were also often a family reference passed down through the generations like a recipe book, with remedies passed from mothers to daughters. Herbals would be used as reminders of when and how to harvest and prepare herbs, empowering families to look after their health.

In Healing with Plants: The Chelsea Physic Garden Herbal, discover how to make your own simple herbal remedies, ideas for how to create a healing herb garden and how to forage for herbs in the wild. A history of healing and fascinating stories are told, including a guide to which ailments each herb can treat and how to use them, from healing trauma with St John’s Wort to soothing a sore throat with an infusion of thyme and honey.

The herbs included are those most well known for having some therapeutic benefit or that have made significant contributions to the history of medicine. Most are also easily accessible for preparing simple healing home remedies, mainly because they are common garden or hedgerow plants.