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Chester's Walled Garden closing in 2010Susie White writes: Some of you may have heard through the gardening magazines that Chesters Walled Garden, which author Susie White has been gardening for 23 years, is to close next May. This is because the new landlord does not wish to renew the lease. This is a great loss as the walled garden has one of the largest collections of herbs in the country and Susie has written several books based on her knowledge of herbs. The garden has a special place in many people’s hearts and Susie has been overwhelmed by many messages of support and outpourings of feelings about the garden’s closure. Ironically, it was just recently that Chesters Walled Garden was voted as one of the best in the whole of the north of England by readers of Gardeners’ World magazine. Over the years it has been featured in every national newspaper and many magazines, been on television over 30 times and written about all over the world. The garden supplied plants to Prince Charles for his thyme walk at Highgrove, won a top award at the National Garden Festival at Gateshead, filmed in the garden with Jane Asher, Sophie Grigson, Roy Lancaster and many others, exhibited at Hampton Court Flower Show, opened many times for charity and holds three National Collections of herbs. Of the National Collections, Susie will be leaving behind the much photographed collection of thyme (Thymus) which would not move well and also that of marjoram (Origanum). But she will be transplanting the National Collection of burnet (Sanguisorba), initially to a temporary site, and later to a permanent one when Susie finds a new place for a garden. She wrote about the Sanguisorba collection in the summer edition of Herbs magazine in 2008. Susie says that as she learnt from the garden itself, her planting style developed and she now incorporates wildflowers amongst the perennials in a naturalistic way. This interlacing of the wild and the cultivated seems to be what makes people feel so endeared to garden, with its echoes of childhood gardens and its informal (though controlled) nature. It has made it a place of peace and somewhere that people feel refreshed. Organically run and planted with wildlife in mind, the bird count for these two acres is 70 species including local rarities such as hawfinch. The ponds attract frogs, toads, newts and the huge hawker dragonflies that you can see on the wing in autumn. Because Chesters Walled Garden is special to so many people, Susie has opened a ‘Garden Memories’ book and is inviting anyone to contribute to it with writings, photographs, short messages or whatever they would like, so that it becomes something to treasure. Kim Lewis, the children’s book illustrator and printmaker, has offered to make a cover for it and Birtley Aris is going to draw the front page in his inimitable style with lines that I have chosen from Vita Sackville West. Susie wants to give visitors somewhere to express their feelings about the plants, wildlife, atmosphere and what the garden has meant to them. As the garden will be closing in May next year, people can still visit it now so that they don’t miss out on seeing it in late summer and autumn. It looks very beautiful in late season with great drifts of asters, sedums and verbena bonariensis (and therefore huge numbers of butterflies), as well as richly coloured dahlias, waving grasses and jewelled rosehips. There will be many who want to see the garden in its last year and record it in photographs before it is closed. Chesters Walled Garden is open from 10-5pm daily until the end of October & for more details see www.chesterswalledgarden.co.uk. |
 
 Photos copyright Debs Cook |
BSc in Herbal Medicine at Leeds Metropolitan University, September 2009Did you know that you can now study for a BSc in Herbal Medicine at Leeds Metropolitan University? Established in 2006 as the BSc in Complementary Therapies, the BSc in Herbal Medicine became a separate qualification in its own right in 2007 and has just had it’s first cohort successfully graduate this summer. It has also received initial accreditation from the EHTPA (European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association). The course is a professional vocational qualification, which will allow graduates to practice as medical herbalists. It can be taken over 3 years full-time or 6 years part-time, and involves both academic study and clinical training (a minimum of 550 hours over the duration of the course to allow graduates to meet criteria for membership of a professional body). Subjects covered include anatomy, pathophysiology, clinical skills, differential diagnosis, practical pharmacy and materia medica (study of medicinal herbs), professional studies, counselling skills and self care, and students are required to complete a dissertation in the final year, offering the opportunity to undertake research in an area of herbal medicine. The University has it’s own dedicated training clinic (with consulting rooms and full dispensary), which also accommodates training for the BSc in Osteopathy and the BSc in Acupuncture also offered by Leeds Metropolitan University. For further information or to apply for entry in 2010, please contact the course leader Dr Biddy Unsworth. |
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Chamomile’s Anti-anxiety Properties Confirmed, August 2009Researchers from Philadelphia, reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology the results of a well-designed clinical trial on German Chamomile (Matricaria recutita). Their results support the traditional use of Chamomile as a calming herb. In the trial either German Chamomile extract or placebo was given to 61 adults with mild-to-moderate anxiety for eight weeks. Using the well-established Hamilton rating score for anxiety, the researchers were able to show a significantly greater drop in anxiety in the group taking Chamomile compared with those on placebo. This is the first controlled clinical trial of chamomile extract for anxiety-related symptoms. The authors conclude that the effects on anxiety are modest, but real. In traditional use, Chamomile is helpful as a mild sedative and calming agent, and herbal practitioners find it particularly suited to anxiety in children. For adults it is often not considered to be strong enough and herbs such as Valerian or Passiflora are often used instead. However, this study shows that anti-anxiety properties, albeit mild ones, can be demonstrated even in adults. Source: Amsterdam JD et al J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2009 29:378 |
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New Ethnomedica Local Data Collector For The Harrogate & Nidderdale Area, August 2009Herb Society member Helen Compton has recently become the Ethnomedica local data collector for the Harrogate and Nidderdale area. I asked her to write about what she does in the event that other Herb Society members may wish to get involved and this is what she had to say. "Although I have only recently joined the Ethnomedica project as a collector, when asked to write a short piece about the project I couldn’t refuse. Of all the research into herbal medicine in the UK, I feel this is one of the most crucial research endeavours currently taking place – we have such a rich tradition of herbal medicine in this country, with excellent documentation of earlier history of the use of herbs, that it would be tragic to see the folk use of medicinal plants in recent history (usually passed down by word of mouth) lost because no-one recorded it. |
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The project is administered from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, but the scope of the project is national, with collectors in most regions. Although I believe anyone is welcome to apply, they are particularly keen to have qualified herbalists collecting data as they have both medicinal and plant knowledge. The process simply involves interviewing individuals who remember the use of medicinal plants by family and friends – standard recording forms are issued so that the data collected is in a useable format. It is up to the collector to advertise the project in their area, and to organise interviews with people, but the team at Kew offer full support to those they recruit as collectors (and also have offered training in the data collection process for those who feel they would benefit from this). |
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New Herbs For Health Website Goes Live, May 2009 |
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| Want to know how to…. Put a natural spring into your step? Combat hay fever? Make an old fashioned cold cure? Or turn detective and learn how to identify high quality, safe herbal medicines from the 100s of remedies found on the health store shelves? New online women’s magazine, Herbfacts.co.uk launches this month for women who want to learn more about herbs for health. Each month, Editor Jane Garton and her team will bring you news and features that address a broad range of common minor health problems, competitions and online expert advice from our panel of leading natural health gurus and medical practitioners. The panel includes; GPs Dr Rosemary Leonard and Dr Sarah Brewer (both are exponents of integrated medicine), Michael van Straten (osteopath, naturopath and acupuncturist), and Dee Atkinson (qualified medical herbalist, practitioner and director of the renowned Napiers Pharmacy). Jane Garton says: “Our on-line magazine aims to provide today’s time poor women with a trusted source of information to help them decide whether a natural approach to relieving a common ailment is the right one for them. “The launch issue includes articles on a variety of herbs that can help relieve a range of common problems including hay fever, stress and sleep. In particular, we have a fantastic feature that helps you learn how to decipher the language used by herbal medicine manufacturers. “The market is largely unregulated at the moment but from 2011, unregulated herbal medicines will have to be authorised for sale by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) having first been checked by them for safety, quality and reliable and accurate product information. This is good news for the consumer who until now has had no way of identifying the quality and safety of products let alone the accuracy of manufacturer’s information.” As herbal medicines are awarded MHRA registration, Herb Facts will list their details. This will provide visitors with one easy reference point to view all herbal medicines that have been assessed for safety, provide reliable product information and are manufactured to stringent quality standards. Registration is FREE and you will receive a monthly newsletter into your ‘Inbox’ highlighting what’s new on the site with links straight through to the relevant features and articles www.herbfacts.co.uk |
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Herbal Wines Healed Ancient Egyptians, April 2009A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine to go down, but wine worked even better for the ancient Egyptians, who used to doctor their alcoholic beverages with medicinal herbs and other ingredients, according to a new study. The oldest of the recently analyzed herbal wines dates to 3150 B.C. Since early medical papyri document the purported health benefits of some of the wine's ingredients, the discovery provides the first direct chemical evidence for wine with organic medical additives. "The ancient Egyptians settled on adding herbs and other ingredients that had marked medicinal effects, probably just based on observational trial and error," Patrick McGovern, lead author of the paper, told Discovery News. "Of course superstitions crept in too, such as when they would throw in a root because it resembled a certain body part, but we think there was some medical truth behind a lot of their wine additives," continued McGovern, an archaeochemist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. |
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