rhizomes, mixings | awakening into October with Community Apothecary

Herbal plants propagated and nurtured at Mulberry Close garden in Chingford for our September open day sale and to spread around in the locality and beyond for more healing love

greetings to you, herbal community!

This lovely September sunshine has been a gentler continuation of summer post-holiday time and such a pleasure of warmth, and we still want more rain.

There’s a lot of sturdy thinking, feeling and action going on as we all navigate toughness and horror of the human world’s mess and confusion, and with this monthly newsletter we share some of that from this part of the earth where we continue meeting each other and exploring ways of caring and nourishing life, trying to make sense of our parts in the intense scenarios playing out close and far. The beautiful earth-home is all below and around us and communicates with us in this journey.

This next month, there are plenty of opportunities to gather in loving land and herb work as well as community togetherness. Read on for October herbal and connected happenings, including the next Hornbeam Herbals medicine making sessions, and we hope to see you around and about! We invite you as always to share any thoughts, feedback, desires or suggestions towards community herbalism for ecosystem & human healthcare in Waltham Forest.

A special event in the borough for all food growers, makers, eaters: the WF Food Growers Network Annual Harvest Fair is happening on Sunday 11th October, in Leytonstone - come take part! See full details below.

We also have an invitation if you are someone with financial capacity and interest & care for our strand of alternate-systems endeavour: to become a supporting member with a regular contribution towards us continuing our work.

And there is now a gorgeous large range of last season’s freshly-dried herbs from gardens and local lands in stock at the Hornbeam, so if you’re someone who loves to brew teas with herbs, or you have particular need for a particular herb that you drink regularly, come see us there at our Apothecary hub on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month (between 10am-5pm) and we can show you the selection. Vibrant and homegrown in this London borough, delicious and collectively nurtured, harvested & processed by members of the community.

sending love, Community Apothecary crew

Hornbeam Herbals: October & November sessions

There are a couple spaces left at the higher end of the sliding scale for our October balm-making sessions on the 7th & 21st.

And November’s sessions are now available: Fire Cider tonic making for the cold season, always a cheerful colourful one.

‘Saining sticks’ - a traditional Scots practice of bundling aromatic healing herbs for burning and cleansing. At our September open day at Mulberry garden, community member Rose-Anna led a beautifulsession around the table in the sunlight, sharing knowledge about this ancient health and spirit ritual that is familiar to many cultures of the world. We conversed, exchanged, smelt and sighed, laughed and relaxed, dreamed and explored as the herbal smoke surrounded us and filled our senses and beings. Many sticks were made to dry for later use. It was a beautiful start to the day. What was your experience if you were part of this session? did it affect how you spent the rest of the day?

Garden news for the autumn:

Garden days:

You can see our regular Waltham Forest garden volunteer sessions here if you are interested to come join us to get involved in herb growing and harvesting for medicinal use and biodiversity, learning about organic urban horticulture and land care and connecting with people to build stronger social landscapes.

Also a callout: we are looking for more volunteers for our Walthamstow food + medicine garden at 10 Cheney Row, at sessions on Fridays 1-3pm & Sundays 10am-12noon. This site is coordinated by Time To Grow workers Jacynthe & Donna and we also do herb work there with Rasheeqa from Community Apothecary at the Friday sessions. You can email us for more info or sign up in our online calendar (let us know if you don’t already have access to this). There is to be a work day at Cheney Row in October - see flyer below.

Don’t miss the Waltham Forest Food Growers Network annual celebration of growing, harvest, and all the hard work put into producing local, organic food in Waltham Forest!

This will be a coming together of the community, with space for celebration, story, and delicious food. All proceeds will raise money for the WFFGN to help continue our vital work supporting community growing and food sovereignty across the borough.

We will host a best-in-show competition, judging the biggest, longest and wonkiest fruit and veg of the season. We will also be awarding the tastiest bakes, the perfect pickle, and the most fabulous ferment, with beautiful handmade ribbons as prizes.

We will have a face painter, storytelling, a seed packet making workshop, and a market with stalls from across the community

Get your tickets here at a price that feels right for you.

Herbal Happenings 🐛 🌞🐝🌸🪴🐌

Thursday 1st October, 10-11am, online:
On Screen: Idle Women On Land: An Ecofeminist Manifesto for Land-based Practices - Join artist Rachel Anderson from Idle Women for an inspiring exploration of the relationship between people, place and community.

Saturday 3rd October, 12noon-6pm, SE21 7EX: Earth Tenders 3rd earthstrong celebration: Black History Month Special - marking 3 years of this global majority-led garden and community health space.

Saturday 10th, 17th October, 12-2pm, Shai Space, London: Winter Alchemy workshop series with Bekah Earth Child: Crafting a herbal toolkit and learning about practices and remedies to support our health through the cold season.

Saturday 10th October 1-9pm, Kingsley Hall E3 3HJ: Feed The Movement - co-build & community feast: a collaborative gathering from Community Food Growers Network, House of Annetta & Platform, bringing us together to support and nourish those who keep our movements fed. With carpentry and building tables, cooking a Palestinian feast and eating communally.

Wednesday 14th October, 6-8pm, Hornbeam Centre Walthamstow: The Generous Rot. Unruly Ecologies - An Entangled Reading Group: Monthly Art and Ecology reading group for people who don’t necessarily like reading groups. Exploring texts & artworks on a specific theme, with a non-human guest of honour each time.

Saturday 17th October, 10am-5pm, Pimlico: London National Park City Festival - Walks, talks, workshops, community celebrating the people connecting Londoners with local nature

Saturday 17th October, 12noon-3pm, Edible Landscapes London, Finsbury Park: Botanical illustration: communing with nature for creative expression - exploring botanical form to connect with our intuition, as part of nature ourselves. With Rebecca of Esoteric Etchings.

Sunday 18th October, 11am-1pm: Canalside herbalism: Celebrating Mary Seacole - Rasheeqa of Hedge Herbs & Community Apothecary will lead a plant walk along the towpath in west London, we’ll connect with the medicinal plants of the season growing in this urban ecosystem, and tell the story of Mary Seacole, a powerful healing practitioner who travelled from her home in Jamaica in the 1800s colonial context to work in healthcare in this country (a story that is ongoingly reflected today), facing outright racism but became a beloved, celebrated Londoner. Be good to have you!

Saturday 24th October, 10am-5pm, outskirts of London: Fieldwork: Autumn - one day workshop with Joe Walsh and Andrew Kerton: Activity on the land as embodied research, with direct observational drawing, somatic movement, sensory herbal connection and a walking meditation around the garden, plus time for reflection and sharing. Email jowwalsh@hotmail.com / adkerton@gmail.com

Sunday 25 October 2025, 9am-3.30pm, Epping Forest: ESEA Sisters in Nature - Creative Contemplation with Mythological Creatures: Join us for an autumnal 5-mile community walk, as Queer trans Asian, Epping-born sea creature, known as The Mollusc Dimension (TMD), invites you for a creative contemplation with mythological creatures in Epping Forest!

Sunday 25th October, 12pm-2pm, Stave Hill Ecological Park: braiding sweetgrass sharing circle - we continue our slow reading of this beautiful book, reading chapter 14: 'Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket'. In this sharing circle, we hope to: ✩ˎˊ˗ co-create a nourishing, gentle environment for building connections and intergenerational healing ✩ˎˊ˗ explore, deepen, reclaim, and re-imagine our relationships to land and to “nature”✩ˎˊ˗ celebrate the abundance of life all around us and within us (and to hold space for those of us that aren’t able to access these feelings right now). BPOC only. Free ticket link here

📅 Saturday 31 October + Sunday 1 November,📍 The Ideas Factory, 28 Bidder Street, Canning Town, E16 4ST: ⚡🚲 WHO'S POWERING THE PARTY? 🔊⚡
Its pedal powered! With no expensive polluting batteries!
Want to learn how to turn your own energy into electricity? Join us for a hands-on weekend where we'll explore the basics of electricity and electronics, design and build pedal powered generators, and experiment with ways to generate, store and use the energy we produce. Find out more and register here (sliding scale cost)

Three ethnobotanical stories of our time, for some tea time reading:

Bramble is a Commons

Weeds of the Anthropocene: A View from Palestine

Extinction is a Continuum

Community callouts for support:

The beautiful and much-loved Garden of Earthly Delights in Hackney, east London has had a devastating fire last week that has destroyed many carefully-built and active structures. Please donate towards their recovery crowdfunder if you can and note they are also asking support in terms of hands for rebuilding, tools, materials
The Agroecology Trust at Dartington Hall in Devon, stewards of the amazing forest garden that is an inspiration and a teaching space for so many in the world of regenerative land work since 2004, has the opportunity to buy the site - it has been under threat since 2025 from the landlords. If you’re able to give any support towards this process you can find out more here