November 2027 newsletter

Dear herbal community,

We hope this turning-of-season newsletter finds you in warm spirits. We’re tipping onward into the darker time, the lively surface energy is lessening as the earth-nourishing leaves fall all around, and we enter the zone of the deeper layers, of soil time and root-work alchemy, decomposition, processing, recycling. Now may there be some stillness and rest and good scenes, for incubation and development of ideas and dreams for the next seasonal cycles.

Thanks to everyone who has been part of our activity this year in all the different ways - gardening & land-communing together, learning, sharing, making medicine, trying and feeding back on remedies and many other connections. Every year feels a little more rooted, and newer potential horizons emerge, which feels hopeful for our collective futures.

The sense of being part of, and held by, our networks and webs of relationship, feels especially strong just now; thanks to the excellent Waltham Forest Food Growers Network constellations for a rich harvest fair earlier this month, and to our Hornbeam apothecary home, and to the developing South Chingford Community Leaders Network where our Mulberry Close garden is building more local connections. We are working on ways to continue sustaining and embedding our different strands of work, and all of you who take part weave key threads into the picture. Appreciation!

As usual below you’ll find upcoming herbal happenings including our Apothecary sessions for this end part of the calendar year, with a new cough medicine from the Unani tradition being planned for December!

You can also find out about other herb, land, healing and community oriented events around the place, and then an exciting thing this autumn-winter is a new collaboration with Borrowed Light Florals in Walthamstow (St James Street area), who are developing gift collections of local makers’ items and are going to have some of our seasonal remedies for sale :) You can find them there from next week, there’ll be a selection of tasty tea blends from our gardens plus winter tonics including Fire Cider and Elderberry/Rosehip oxymel for your cold-time health needs.

Sending herb love, and we hope to see you this month in the garden or apothecary. Mulberry Close monthly garden induction is this coming Thursday 5th November - come join us for some bonfire time warmth and spark. For more info just drop us an email!

Community Apothecary crew XO

Community Apothecary autumn activities

Upcoming Hornbeam Apothecary sessions (learning & medicine making) at the Hornbeam Centre, 11am-2pm

November (4th & 18th): Fire Cider winter warming tonic - preparing kitchen medicine to fortify circulation, digestion and immune protection (a few £15 tickets left)

December (2nd & 16th): Making Majoon - a herbs and honey based preparation from the Unani medical system, for winter respiratory health

Our current remedy stocks: Available from the Hornbeam on 1st & 3rd Wednesday of each month (10am-4pm) and at Borrowed Light from this month during their opening times

Garden sessions you can join around Waltham Forest

Herbal happenings autumn 2027

Saturday 7th November, 11am-3pm, OrganicLea, Hawkwood Nursery, 115 Hawkwood Crescent, London, E4 7UH: Introduction to Herbal Balms for global majority folks - learn about herbs for skin - calendula, lavender and plantain. Make a herbal balm to take home and meet a new herb through a guided tea tasting.

Saturday 7th November, 11am-3pm, The Abeng Community Garden, Delloraine Street Allotments, Deptford, London SE8 4QH: The Abeng Garden x Dr Janine Francois: Sacred Black Ecologies - a day exploring Janine’s transoceanic project positioning land, plants, water as ancestral memory and living archives across the Caribbean, West Africa and Britain. Gardening, conversation & shared community meal.

Saturday 7th November, 6.30-9pm, Hornbeam Centre, Walthamstow: Kitchen Resistance book launch - How Women Have Used Food As A Political Tool since 1800. Readings, food, company, resistance! Culmination of 2 years of local social research into food for community building and activism.

Resist+renew upcoming workshops in Manchester & Bristol: Radical Imagination (7-8 Nov) and Transformative Approaches to Conflict (28-29 Nov)

Tuesday 10th November, 7.30pm-late, Antwerp Arms, Tottenham N17 8AS: Firebrand Poets present Congo: the heart of Afrika open mic evening of spoken word and verse, this month honouring matrilineal restorative practices and the foundations of oral transmission. All welcome to perform. Find out more here

Wednesday 25th November, 2.30-8.30pm, Cody Dock, E16 4TL: London Edible City Summit with Capital Growth - A gathering for the urban food growing movement on how to create a food-resilient and nature-rich city. Ideas, conversations, workshops, food, music, networking & celebration.

Friday 27th November, 6-8pm, Paper Garden, Teredo Street, London SE16 7LW: heart circle - a place to pause, reconnect, and explore what it means to be alive in these changing times.

Wednesday 2nd December, 7.30-9pm, online: Herbs For Winter Resilience: Jamaican Maroon Herbalism Workshop with Bekah Earthchild - exploring winter resilience with ancestral plants and indigenous wisdom.

Callouts / announcements

• Our Apothecary hub, The Hornbeam Centre in Walthamstow, also home and heart of many resource and care-sharing activities and people in our area, is fundraising in partnership with AEDdonate to install a defibrillator at the side of the building, to be available for use in light of the centre working with vulnerable people living with poor health and being located at a busy junction with many local businesses and lots of footfall. If you can support towards it, especially if you’re local to the area, it will be greatly appreciated.

• Pre-orders open for the beautifully made Waltham Forest Food Growers Network 2027 Garden Planner! From the crew: ‘We have launched pre-orders for next year’s 2027 Planner and we have about a week till we have to send to print. Last year we went for 750, this year we want to go for 1,000. But we are also dreaming about the possibility of selling more... because of the economics of printing, if we sell 1,000 we'll raise about £3.5k for the network, if we sell 2,000 we'll raise £13.5k for the network. As we're entering a bit of an uncertain year financially next year, we'd love your help spreading the word! Could you share this with a few friends?’

• Community member Amber shares her partner Shah Badyari’s new venture: BoostLife Organics, a permaculture informed wellbeing project bringing soil-first organic drinks - he is launching Taster Packs and doing a crowdfunder with rewards to invite founding supporters - find out more here

• Jobs at Neuromancers - a peer-led organisation providing autonomous, abolitionist, and accessible mental health care for and by the neurodivergent+ community. They’re also reaching out for support to protect their work.

An interesting read

Twenty Vegetables and a Vanishing Basket by Samira Dewan Suri

A sharing

Gaiosophy: an app made by Sophie Spiro, seeking to support people to build relationship with local plant life, folklore wisdom and foraging, ‘born out of a prayer’

Scenes from the last month with Community Apothecary: Epsom Road hormone herbs garden; picking huge Rosehips for medicine at the bottom of Herb Hill at Mulberry Close garden; the Waltham Forest Food Growers Network Harvest Fair at the Good Shepherd Studios in Leytonstone; making Calendula Skin Soothe Balm at the Hornbeam; Yaya up the oak tree at Mulberry; Cheney Row garden of food growing with Time To Grow and our respiratory system herbs; a tea blend in the making at the Hornbeam including dried Elderflowers from an earlier, warmer season…