Growing Medicinal Plants and Herbs

I have a small patch of land which will be receiving full sun through out the year and am thinking of making it into a little garden full of plants with medicinal purposes.

I'm just wondering if anyone on here activity grows and uses their plants for medicinal purposes now, or is it just a novelty?

Could anyone recommend me a book that is almost an encyclopaedia on medicinal plants too? I know of the James Wong one but wondered if there were any others that are more in depth.

 

Hi Jane,

There was one that someone stole off me, think it was called "A New Herbal"

I use the encylopdedia of herbs & herbalism & health from the hedgerow, but I suspect they are out of print now.

 

I don't actively grow medicinal plants, but do have a few growing, purely I think, because my Gran always had them in her garden and from a very young child I remember her saying things like, 'Oh, you've always got to have ....... in a garden'.

I don't grow it, but she always grew feverfew, since she suffered from severe migrane - she'd eat (just) a couple of small leaves when she felt a migrane starting - they're quite bitter, (I tried one once!) but although she'd occasionally just pick and eat them, she'd usually finely chop them and sprinkle them into a sandwich, probably to disguise the taste. She'd always keep some she'd dried too, which I understand were every bit as effective.

Of course, since the definition of 'herb' is ... 'Any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavouring, food, medicine, or perfume,' you're quite possibly already growing 'medicinal' plants in any event.

My 'medicinal' garden includes chamomile and mint of course, sage and basil - which is not only good in cooking but crushed up leaves rubbed on the skin are good for insect bites and, if you've got a cold, pouring boiling water over the leaves makes a great inhalant. Indoors I have an Aloe vera, break off bits of leaf and spread the 'gel' on burns or bites, particularly good on sunburn (if we can remember what sunburn is!).

Just a thought, but whilst 'medicinal' to me, instantly suggests 'healing', there are a number of plants you can grow which have other uses, lavender or hops spring to mind, even rose petals (if you fancy making pot-pourri)

You can read one book on-line - http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html and Amazon, of course, offer a number of books Bartram's Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine by .... Thomas Bartram and The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants by Chevallier Andrew to name just two.

As a BTW - I watched James Wong's TV series, it was all very interesting and I'm sure his book is a fascinating read, but I thought many of his 'recipes' required a lot of 'faffing' about. I particularly remember his 'plantain cream' for insect bites being a case in point, where, in addition to plantain leaves he used olive or sunflower oil, almond oil, beeswax, emulsifying wax, glycerin and vitamin C powder when he could just as easily have crushed basil leaves or a bit of aloe vera!!

 

personally I'd save my money for the plants and 'google' for the info. find out the names of the plants and put in (google) the name and see what info comes up. I use Origional Barch Flower Remedies (larch and rock rose) drops for my young border collie the drops help her to be a little calmer. you could get some names of madicinal plants from their listto start you off. also many of the culinary (cooking) herbs are madicinaltoo. Good hunting.

 

It wasn't a new herbal, that was a 17th century one

 

I used to grow mildly medicinal herbs on purpose. You have to be extremely careful though because quite a lot of medicinal herbs are actually quite poisonous if you use the wrong part, or prepare it wrong, or use the wrong quantity.

Also be careful to check the latin name of the plant you're after. For example, many herb books will tell you to use Marigold flowers, but they often neglect to mention that they mean Calendula and not Tagetes, both of which are commonly known as Marigolds.

Take care to avoid confusion from misleading named plants. For example the curry plant, while smelling of curry, is not anything at all to do with it and is mildly toxic.

Oh, and lets not forget that Foxglove and Deadly nightshade are both common ingredients in herbal remedies for things like nervous tension, anxiety and to combat the effects of withdrawal from the likes of nicotine. Both will kill of death if you do it wrong.

Some seemingly innocent herbs are also dangerous in large quantities or for certain people. How dangerous can Rosemary be? Its a culinary herb after all. Large quantities can raise your blood pressure so its not recommended for people with know heart problems.

Right, all the warnings aside, which I threw in just to urge caution, there's loads of good stuff you can grow for everyday things. Yarrow infused in hot water will blast away most common cold symptoms. Sage is ace for any kind of digestive problems (sage and onion stuffing was not invented for its flavour, it was to make animal fat more digestible). Lemon balm is supposed to calm you down, and is safe enough in large quantities as long as common sense prevails. I find it to be a horrble invasive weed with no value at all though. Its not in my current garden and I have no plans to change that.

 

Begining of New Year, new leaf, stop hoarding and chuck out all you do not use
So out went all the gardening books I had been given, just keeping the RHS encyclopedias
One I chucked out was a 1905 illustrated book encyclopedia of medicinal plants, how to grow them and how to produce the correct medicines from them, and for what ailments

Live and learn, DO NOT THROW ANYTHING AWAY even if SWHMBO says so Someone may have a use for it

Jack McH