04/06/2025
🌿HERBALISM - "Being an herbalist does not have to be an occupation. If you are simply a person who collects and grows herbs, or a person who practices household wellness by using herbs from your own garden, you probably don’t—and probably shouldn’t—prescribe. But there are basic principles, systems, and safety measures that herbalists need to share in order to demystify the craft.
You may already be a budding herbalist if you explore the herbal world with the curious eye of a gardener, cook, or parent. These days, chefs, mixologists, brewers, cosmeticians, and CBD purveyors are all opening gates to the herb garden and helping our culture rediscover many of the essential flavors and health-giving properties of locally grown herbs. Since many of our traditional botanicals have a history of culinary use, gardeners and cooks already have a leg up: we are familiar with the cultivation, flavor profiles, and benefits of herbs. And now we have science as well as lore to help us make informed choices.
Herbalism is born of gardens. It blends horticulture, foodways, folkways, art, science, and craft for the sake of wellness. It is the gardener’s first line of defense, and, while it can sound mysterious, it can be as simple as chamomile tea for digestion, jewelweed for poison ivy, or aloe for a burn. It is the craft of harvesting plants with useful chemical components and turning these plants into helpful medicine.
In traditional communities, an old sage is a wise person who knows how to heal mind, body, and spirit, often with herbs. Unfortunately, ours are among the first generations that have a significant gap in herbal knowledge passed down from elders. When government regulatory agencies took over medical oversight in the early 20th century, there was an ugly divorce between the pharmaceutical industry and herbalism. Without question, science had brought new standards to medicine, but just as notably, herbs could not be patented for profit, and the pharmaceutical industry embraced the market shift to promote a distrust of herbal medicines and the people who dispensed them. Instead, a flood of chemical medicines from an emerging pharmaceutical industry virtually swept away the libraries and sage elders that carried the wisdom of the ages.
Meanwhile other nations around the world, far less willing to throw the baby (or elder) out with the bathwater, kept traditional herbal preparations on pharmacy shelves alongside chemical medicines. Fortunately, with a heavy lean on the modern chemical analysis of herbs, we are reconstructing old systems of understanding that can be partnered with current scientific method to create a more complete picture of medicine from the garden. A rising generation of science-literate herbalists and nutritionists are offering plant-based alternatives, and we are once again recognizing plants for both their nutritional and medicinal value and integrating them into medicine cabinets, cosmetic counters, family meals, and cocktail bars.
Modern herbalists need to know which plants can be sustainably gleaned or foraged; as entrepreneurial herbalists, we must have the wisdom to foster an environment where we can cultivate more than we harvest. If we know that we need more of a botanical than we can harvest sustainably, we will either plant more, cultivating the plant ourselves, or hire a local farm to raise a crop for production that helps us, the farmer, and the land to thrive.
Once we have access to plants, herbalism becomes an engaging exploration of craft and science as we ferment, distill, and blend the salves, elixirs, and fragrances that serve as our primary on-ramps to wellness. Herbalism means that my teapot is a seasonal prescription for almost anything that ails me—or at least a steaming cup of calm to help me move through it. Second to the teapot, my salad bowl offers medicine fresh from the garden, accompanied by the roughage we all need to keep healthy; it is a blend of seasonal flavors and medicinal attributes delivered up as a tasty mix of greens, veg, roots, fruits, flowers, seeds.
The rest is just a matter of applying herbalism to the dishes I cook. Savory to counterbalance “windy” foods, thyme and garlic as natural antimicrobials, and so on. Long ago I learned that I seldom needed maximum-strength over-the-counter drugs to blow out a sniffle or calm a headache if I gave my body the chance to respond to the subtlety of herbs that I now routinely rely upon to boost my immune system and act as my first line of defense. Herbalism reminds me that aromatherapy starts with smelling a rose to gladden the heart, planting a lilac to welcome spring. Herbalism can be as simple as making a pot of elderberry-sage tea, or as complex as distilling or compounding medicines for market. But at its heart, herbalism means applying the science and craft of botanical wellness, right from our own garden"
Quote and colorized herbal artwork from the frontispiece and end-pages of my book by Patricia Wakida. How many of the herbs I wrote about can you identify in the artists illustration? You can get my book at your local bookstore or here: https://www.amazon.com/Heirloom-Gardener-Traditional-Plants-Skills/dp/1604699930/ref=sr_1_1?crid=18IE9KRVYB2L&keywords=john+forti+heirloom+gardener+book&qid=1637012192&qsid=142-2534266-1903157&sprefix=john+Forti%2Caps%2C304&sr=8-1&sres=1604699930%2C1635650836%2C0486429784%2C1452145768%2C0760368724%2C1641525096%2CB097L1DXL7%2C076035992X%2CB08W7DMWZ3%2C1571988459%2C1525804618%2C1401324398%2C0988474913%2C1603442138%2C1616895543%2C1603421386&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
