Results for Category: Botanical
Foraged Skin Care Remedies
Early spring is a wonderful time for foraging. After winter, it is refreshing to finally get outside and gather some healing herbs. Foraging for plants is an easy way to enjoy the benefits of herbs, and to learn more about the gifts that nature offers us. Gathering free wild plants to add to our creations…
10 Reasons Why Witch Hazel Rocks!
I have been known to buy witch hazel extract by the gallon. I always keep it on hand and substitute it for water in almost all of ...
Looking for Natural Flu Remedies? Woad Works!
Worries about influenza, Ebola, and measles are making headlines. As herbalists, we have many natural flu remedies in our toolkits...
Comfrey Uses + Soothing Comfrey Cream Recipe
I started growing comfrey a couple of years ago, but my reasons were NOT strictly altruistic. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my herbs, but I particularly love perennial herbs like comfrey that are well suited to a pot and can be brought indoors during our cold Kansas winter. There is Comfort in…
How To Grow Pea Shoots Indoors: Fresh Greens Year-Round
With the garden tucked in for the winter and the farmer’s markets closing up shop until spring, we’re back to listless strolls through the produce aisles of the local grocery store, seeing the stacks of vegetables but just not feeling them. They are beautiful, yes, and abundant — we are grateful for that. Some of…
Boost Your Pet’s Life With Turmeric: Natural Wellness Awaits!
Just as herbs can positively affect humans, the same is true for animals. It is thought by some that humans may have first learned...
Planting Fruit Trees in the Fall
In some areas of the country, fall is the best season for planting fruit trees. While it seems like planting fruit trees would be...
Mountain Wellness: Yarrow and Arnica Uses
Those of us on the path of studying herbalism will attest that learning about the edible and wellness properties of plants has shifted our view of the natural world around us. Where once we may have identified nature by ecosystem — yard, forest, field, swamp, lake, mountain, desert — we now see the trees, plants,…
The Beauty of Herbs
The plants we gather from field and forest contain hundreds if not thousands of nutrients and active constituents packed into dark roots, red and yellow petals, silvery leaves, shining seeds, luscious fruits. From walking a garden path lined with fragrant thyme, discovering yarrow on a mountain hike just when we need it, to infusing oil…
Rose Hips: The Floral Superfood!
What do we typically think of when we see a rose? Usually, we think of a long-stemmed flower used as part of a romantic gesture, o...
The Health Benefits of Neem
Is the world’s number one herb a sleeper? Well, if you have never heard of the benefits of neem (Azadirachta indica) then th...
How To Save Seeds: From Harvesting to Using Them
When It Comes To Gardening, Timing Is Everything I am sure you have been in that place, being the careful gardener that you are. That is, you mindfully plant your seeds in April, May, or June for summer-long harvests of aromatic culinary greens. You water, watch, and wait until the little first leaves emerge and then…
7 Reasons Herbs May Not Work
Many times people new to herbs get excited about learning and using herbs. I know I sure did. They go out and buy all kinds of books. They stock up on a lot of dried herbs, bottles, and preparation utensils. They have their cabinets, refrigerator, and closets full of the things they’re making and trying. They’re…
Health Benefits of Goldenrod (+ Tea Recipe)
You know it’s late summer when you see the beautiful and stately goldenrod plant gracing our yards, meadows, and waste spaces. I...
10 Awesome Uses For Aloe Vera
It’s late in summer, and with the heat bearing down upon us, most of us Americans are dreaming of the impending fall that is...
3 Supportive Roots to Harvest in Fall: Dandelion, Burdock and Yellow Dock
As the days grow a bit shorter and the nights a little cooler, we can sense the approach of autumn and the changes it brings. Fall is root season! Autumn is a time of harvest and abundance, and as the earth itself grows cooler, digging for nourishing, medicinal roots gives us a close intimacy with…
How to Plan and Plant a Fall Garden
Believe it or not even in cold weather climates, you can plant a fall garden and watch it grow. While the thought of a lush, vibrant garden typically conjures up images of summer, with the right planning and the right planting, you can achieve autumn abundance. In fact, depending on where you live, many plants…
3 Surprising Medicinal Uses of Black Pepper
It’s hard to imagine an American dining table without a black pepper grinder or shaker. A tropical vine native to India, black p...
Starting a Keyhole Garden
Gardening is a passion that has resurfaced with a vengeance in recent years. Whether it’s to save money on veggies and fruits, o...
How To Start An Indoor Herb Garden
Have you ever wondered about the bounty that nature gives us each and every year? If you’re here, I’m betting you have. We do love wildcrafting here at the Herbal Academy of New England, but we understand that maybe you need some herbs that don’t naturally grow in your backyard or down the local nature trail….
5 Simple Ways to Conserve Water for Your Garden
Much of the country, including the Southwest and northern Texas, are currently experiencing significant drought. This is not only an alarming situation, but it can be a frustration to those who enjoy long showers and like to keep their lawns a perfect shade of emerald green. But it’s also a problem for those of us…
The Shakers and our First Herbades
Who Were the Shakers? The Shakers were a religious sect of “believers” who established agriculturally-based and independently ...
The Nature of Herbalism
In today’s world of processed food and manufactured drugs, a growing number of idealistic individuals have eschewed the mass-pro...
How to Harden Seedlings and Protect Your Garden
Gardening is a popular past-time, and many people invest a large amount of money every year in plants and seedlings, only to be rewarded with droopy, wilted, dead plants within a few weeks. Fix.com has created an infographic entitled 9 Steps to Harden Seedlings, giving you all the info you need in order to give…
Oats Benefits: Getting To Know Avena Sativa
Such a beautiful name, Avena sativa, known by most as the common oat. It’s interesting how knowledge of a plant can become lost even as it is daily right under our noses. Humankind has focused so much on the calorie-dense oat grain as a food source, we’ve neglected its medicinal uses, not to mention those…
Harvesting and Cooking Nettles (Plus, Nettle and White Bean Recipe!)
Spring nettles are at their best right now in New England – new, spring-green, and tender – so last weekend I was deli...
5 Herbs That Grow In Shade
With the coming of summer, you’re all ready to take in the majesty of the large, sweeping landscape that is your forty-acre prop...
The Virtues of Violets – Health Benefits of Violets
A few weeks ago, I looked around our 5 acres to see what may be sprouting after a long, cold winter. Soon I saw that my first little escaped and self-sown flowering plant had emerged. Guess which one. Violet! Perhaps cultivated for hardiness as well as beauty, the little johnny jump-up violets (Viola tricolor) had popped up after…
3 Easy Tips for Late Gardening
It seems like everyone in your life is gardener extraordinaire…except for you. Your neighbor, your best friend, and your perfect sister-in-law have all found the time to plant a whole garden amidst schedules that are as crazy as yours. And since you haven’t even gotten started, is it possible to do some late gardening? What…
What is Compost Tea? Plants Drink Tea, Too!
At the Herbal Academy, we believe in cultivating awareness of our interconnectedness with the living communities all around us. Wh...
