The Healing Garden: Herbal Plants for Health and Wellness

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From the Publisher

Herbal Honeys

Herbal honeys are wonderful to add to tea, oxymels, and syrups, or to dribble on special cakes and pastries. Honey also soothes sore throats (it’s great added to herbal throat sprays) and eases coughs. (See the herbal cough syrup recipe under Herbal Syrups, page 108 in the book)

For more than twenty-five years I have made an herbal honey with fresh holy basil leaves and flowers, using raw honey from the same local beekeeper. I prefer raw honey (honey that has not been heated above 95 degrees F/35 degrees C). However, the high water content found in fresh herbs like holy basil can cause raw honey to ferment. The solution is to turn your jar full of fresh herbs and honey every day, gently moving and mixing the honey and herbs. Strain the herbs from the honey after two to four weeks.

I prefer the flavor of honey made from fresh herbs, though you can experiment with dried herbs such as lavender, rosemary, thyme, peppermint, and sage. —Deb Soule, author, The Healing Garden

Foot Baths, Healing Flower Baths, Herbal Steams, and More…

Foot, hand, full body, and sitz baths are healing and rejuvenating to the body and spirit. Baths stimulate circulation to congested, cold, or crampy areas; move stagnant blood; relax and calm the nervous system; warm the body; break a fever; detoxify; relieve aches and pains; and reduce swollen perineum tissue. Start by making one or two quarts of tea using various fresh or dried herbs. Let the herbs infuse in hot water for fifteen minutes. Strain, then pour the tea into a bathtub filled with hot water or a pan designated for a foot, hand, or sitz bath. Find more healing bath recipes in The Herbal Garden.

Healing With Herbs: 3 Examples from The Healing Garden

Calendula

Healing qualities: This magnificent medicinal flower warms and uplifts the spirit, embodies the sun’s light-filled nature, restores vitality,and heals damp and hidden places in the body. A valuable falland wintertime remedy, calendula adds joy and color to tea blends.Calendula mildly stimulates the immune system and is beneficial for reducing colds, swollen glands, flu, and fever (when combined with wild bergamot and yarrow). The flower’s bitter flavor gently stimulates the actions of the liver and gallbladder, aiding the body in eliminating toxins. Calendula also supports lymphatic detoxification following an illness. A tea or diluted tincture soothes the mucosa (lining) of a person’s mouth if it is raw or inflamed, and heals gum tissue after a tooth extraction.

Echinacea

Healing qualities: Echinacea has remained an important medicinal plant for treating insect bites, poisonous snakebites, sore throats, abscesses, and septicemia. I reach for echinacea tincture at the onset of a viral or bacterial infection, especially when the throat is sore, the body has been exposed to wind, and/or a thick yellow-greenish sputum (a sign of heat) is being coughed up. Echinacea’s acrid nature thins phlegm and sputum so they can be more easily expectorated from the body. The plant’s bitter and cool nature clears the heat caused by the infection. Echinacea and burdock root, taken internally three to four times daily, is one of my favorite combinations for resolving boils, carbuncles, and lymphatic swellings.

Teasel

Healing qualities: I once observed a dove with a broken wing. Each morning, over several weeks, she emerged from a sheltered area and drank the water held within the leaves of the teasel plant. One day she flew away. She had healed! Later that summer, baby doves appeared in our garden. This experience led me to study teasel. Since that time, I have included teasel root tincture in herbal blends for broken bones or inflamed and injured muscles, joints, and tendons, and as part of a protocol for people living with Lyme disease. I also recommend a few drops of root tincture or flower essence for people whose spirit feels broken—who feel emotionally exhausted, depleted, discouraged, vulnerable, or otherwise at odds with the world. According to David Dalton’s Stars of the Meadow, “Teasel helps one find the way back to living in harmony with one’s soul.”

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton Architectural Press (April 27, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616899263
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616899264
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.6 x 1 x 9 inches