27^th March 2010, 11am – 11pm, St Clements Church M21 9JF

The Chorlton Big Green Festival is fun and friendly green gathering offering the opportunity for you to sample sustainable living through a programme of live entertainment, workshops, stalls, food, dancing etc.

As a part of the festival I will be running a stall in their Wellbeing area. This is an opportunity to meet me and have a discussion about how Herbal Medicine could be of benefit to you and your family. I will also be gathering your remembered remedies for the Ethnomedica Project.

During the afternoon I will be demonstrating how to make a Marigold Balm and giving away Marigold plants and seeds, so that you can grow your own and make this handy first aid remedy for yourself. Later in the day I am also going to be leading an Herb Walk looking at the medicinal herbs that will just be poking their heads through the cracks in the pavements and in the gardens of Chorlton.

Although I was not able to make it last year I have heard really good reports about it and think it will be a fab day. I know that my friends at the Hulme Community Garden Centre will be there selling their excellent organic plants and hopefully some of my creams, tinctures and teas. Also, apparently the Chorlton Plant Swap stall was very popular last year, so bring along your excess seedlings, cuttings etc and we can all get growing a lovely selection of plants this season.

So hope to see you there, do say hello if you are and have fun!

Have been looking at other herbal medicine related blogs and found this by Martin Hughes-Games on the BBC Autumn Watch Blog. It features him going on a herb walk with Christine Stapeley who is an inspirational herbalist based in Wiltshire.

I saw her speak last year at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists Conference where she demonstrated how to make remedies based on ancient recipes.

I love this sort of thing especially when they are made with really simple herbs we can find in our back gardens or growing all around us.

Anyway here she is talking about self heal, red clover and making a muscle rub out of nettle seeds. Wonderful!

For all of you that are on Facebook I also have a Green Man Medical Herbalist page.

This is another way to stay up to date with me and all things herbal!

Here are several news items about herbal medicine.

Sky News – Sunday February 07, 2010 – Medical Herbalists Fear Cowboy Practitioners

BBC News – Thursday, 18 February 2010 – Guilty plea in Chinese herbal ‘cancer’ case

In this case a banned substance was in a herbal formula. This is very different to seeing a trained western medical herbalist who would make up a unique medicine specifically formulated for the patient.

BBC News - Sunday, 31 January 2010 – Professionalise herbalism says MEP

More on regulating herbalist, this time from Wales which has a very long and rich history of herbal medicine.

I have just bought a new camera! I am very excited by it as not only does it take great photos but it does video as well. I especially like the macro setting which takes really good close ups, fab for taking pics of plants.

So armed with my new toy I hope to keep a visual diary of the changing seasons and a log of the herbs that are growing all around us.

Here are a few shots I took on a very cold a frosty Valentine morning on a walk around Hulme where I live. 

The Ethnomedica Project is run by Kew Gardens. It is recording the remembered herbal remedies that have been passed down through families or ones that people remember someone telling them about. This is our oral tradition which is in danger of being lost.

I have just become a collector for this project so if you have any family or old remedies that you would be happy to be recorded please contact me.

Now is the time that the beautiful little coltsfoot flowers begin to appear. These are perhaps the earliest spring flowers, along with the snow drops and crocuses. They tend to grow on waste land so are good one for city dwellers to spot. Mind you if you are gathering them try to find a place free of dogs!

I have make a… cough syrup from these using a similar process to the one I use for my Thyme & Onion Syrup.

I also found this great blog called Eat Weeds that has an intersting page on Coltsfoot with a video by Chris Holland showing how to identify the plant and introducing the culinary and medicinal properties.

These are some pics of Coltsfoot I found on wikimedia common: