The Journey

Community Apothecary started as a vision of a place where people can access herbs and knowledge to support our collective health with plant medicine, learn, share skills and make medicine together for the community around it. Herbalism is a great connector - of histories, intercultural knowledges, ancestral threads, earth relationships, stories. It is also essentially anti-capitalist! herbs grow everywhere and we all have the right to know them and their being - and doing this communally brings a lot of joy and potential for greater health. They draw us closer and inspire us to create our own hubs of mutual support, guided by their love and power.

Around 2017, after Rasheeqa started sharing about the idea in herbal workshops and other group activities, Izzy and Ximena, herb lovers and growers in the community, joined to start exploring how it could be done. We were supported by others interested in the possibilities for generating learning and connection, including Sunniva and Brian from Organiclea Community Growers, who contributed outreach and project development input. Through these processes, with the solid support of Organiclea in the early phases, we have organically developed and become more established through the years, in the shape of community medicine gardens around Waltham Forest in London and a herbal Apothecary space at the Hornbeam Centre in Walthamstow.

The gardens are located in Leyton, Walthamstow and Chingford and represent a mix of housing estate, residential and allotment sites whose use was activated and navigated by Organiclea outreach and market gardening activity and then offered to us. When we started to care for and cultivate these gardens, the original vision was opened out much more broadly and richly, showing us that we could practice the whole journey - ‘from seed to salve’ - together and learn from each other in the process how to approach health, how to relate with and nurture the land and ecosystems we live in, and how to respectfully connect with the healing activities of plants, across our varied backgrounds, cultures and health situations, as facilitators and participants.

Through 2020 many of you were part of the start of this at the 4 gardens, where we started seeing what was in them, thinking about what to do in them, preparing beds and soil, planting seeds and plug plants, making compost, meeting creatures, watering, drinking teas of herbs, making seasonal remedies, having lots of joyful moments. We decided to make a healing focus at each garden by planting herbs that were connected with particular kinds of health situations that we talked about together, health issues that arise commonly amongst us.

At Kishwar’s garden in Walthamstow, Cheney Row, it was the start of the pandemic situation and we planted herbs that bring anti-infective and respiratory & immune system supporting power. At Izzy’s little garden in Leyton, Clyde Place, are growing lots of skin soothing and soul soothing herbs. The other Leyton garden in the back of Siraj’s house, very long and narrow, is the start of a mix of cycle-supporting herbs that help the hormones and the balance of stress. Of course health isn’t divided up like that but it was a way to try some learning categories and combinations of herbs for medicine. And all the gardens have quite a mix really! It feels like mix is good.

The most exciting part in 2020 was arriving at Mulberry Close, the Chingford garden which is a large and potent land, a council allotment site. Here there is a lot of space for growing herbs and we have planted a medicinal ‘forest garden’ part, we are still in the stages of discovery there and there’s a magic to the journey. Since then, we have shapeshifted in our crew, with Ximena leaving for life reasons, and Izzy moving away from London - core integral parts of the foundation of this project - and we have welcomed Jayne and Jonny as team members through the last 3 years who are now pillars of our continuing unfolding. Rasheeqa, Jayne and Jonny coordinate the triple aspects of the project with strong support from the wider community, and we are now joined by Odhran, new herbalist who is part of the Hornbeam Apothecary activity.

6 years on from taking on Mulberry garden, we are ongoingly developing our community of participants: local residents, dwellers of London from further afield, herbal students, earth lovers, gardeners, learners, medicine makers, healthseekers, friends, neighbours, children and elders - all are welcome. The diversity of life in our world is what makes for health and vibrancy and we want to support this in our work, together. We hope you’ll join us!