My Journey into Becoming a Hedgerow Herbalist

My journey began right back from a young child, at the age of 5 or 6 I can vividly recall sitting in the darkest corner of the garden around a makeshift stone “firepit” with my mums kilner jars and wooden spoon, making potions. While other girls wanted to be princesses, I wanted to be a witch! It was my Nan, my mum’s mum who encouraged me down my witchy path, sharing her knowledge of nature and her garden with me. It was she who bought me my first deck of tarot cards at the age of 11.

Connecting with the elements, making offerings and altars just came naturally, but it wasn’t to be until many years later that I really started to seriously use plants, herbs and oils for healing.

I have been an intuitive herbalist for some years, guiding, advising and signposting people so that they can work intuitively to find out what is going to work for them themselves. The remedies I make and use are gentle, and intended to support and nourish rather than “cure”. Being well is not the same as being fixed or cured. When we work with the folk healing wise woman tradition we work on the whole system rather than just the symptoms, to let Mother Nature heal and nurture us, while accepting where we are in the present moment. I have learned extensively from the Wise Woman Herbalist Susun Weed, who is my mentor.

This ties in with all the other holistic work that I do – we are not singular independent organisms, we are not our dis-ease. We are finely tuned inter-connected beings. I believe that part of the dis-ease that can trouble us is that we have become so disconnected from Gaia, Mother Earth, and we are feeling this now on a very physical level. Our food no longer nourishes us like it used to – intensive farming has depleted the soil and coupled with our fast-paced toxic stressful lifestyles, it’s no wonder we suffer from the inflammatory auto immune disorders that cause so many of our modern-day heath complaints.

I am not suggesting foregoing allopathic medicine, we live in our 21st century world, and modern medicine is a lifesaver – but I am suggesting that we can work with it in a much more harmonious synergistic way, that can benefit our own heath and that of the planet! By growing our own food and medicine we can start to empower ourselves to take back some of the control of our own health and well-being.

I can work with you providing gentle complementary therapies and healing, using essential oils, massage, reiki, energy work etc., as well as talking to you about what plants, herbs, tinctures, teas and infusions could help support you. I offer my own herbal tea blends and tinctures that I can prescribe for you personally.

Herbal Consultations

It is my aim to work with you to help you to achieve better health and harmony in your life, empowering you and helping you gain more control and take responsibility for your health and healing.

When you book a consultation with me we have a detailed look into your whole lifestyle to gain insights into the root causes of what is going on.

I can do this with a face to face consultation, which is my preferred choice as we can go through energy and breath work techniques, but we can also use video and telephone consultations as well.

What happens during a consultation?

Your first consultation is very important, as I can build up a picture of you, your health and lifetsyle. We will go into details of your full medical history, including your family’s history, discuss your diet and lifestyle, including any medication or supplements you take.

This allows me to assess the underlying issues of your condition and create a holistic approach to providing what herbs, treatments, lifestyle changes you may need to bring about the harmony you are wishing to achieve. This will be a completely individual treatment plan, that will evolve over time as we work together. Every person responds to herbs in different ways.

Because herbal remedies work over a long period of time I emphasise this is not a “quick fix” (although dramatic results can happen), plant medicine works in subtle ways but their effects are longer lasting and have less harmful side effects than pharmaceuticals.

Fees;

  • Initial consultation, includes researching time, writing the treatment plan, creating the remedy and working through any physical practices and recommendations for you; £70 (excluding any remedies)
  • Follow up consultation, includes further research, any adjustments needed and written up plan; £50
  • Prices for remedies will vary depending on what they are, I work with mainly tinctures and tea blends, but also supplements – some I will provide for you, some I will recommend you buy from other places, but as a rough guide from £12 for a 100ml tincture blend, £11 for a 30g tea blend.

 

Herbal Teas

I have beautiful tea blends available, made with over 9 soothing nourishing herbs, such as rose, oatstraw, linden blossom and many more. These teas are not only beautiful to look at, they taste amazing and are filled with so many healing properties. – so far I have Relax, Women’s Blend, Liver Nourish & Support, Menopause Support, Anti-Anxiety and Digestive Ease, but I can make a bespoke mix up for you.   £11 for a 30g personal blend inclusive of free postage

If you wish to deepen your knowledge even further, I can come to your home and help you plan a healing garden so that you can grow your own medicine chest.

hedgerow herbalist

Planting a Magical Healing Garden

One of the ways that I can help you reconnect with your intuition and begin your journey into well-being is to come and help you plant a magical healing garden. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have much space, even a few pots of the right herbs or plants can make such a different to our own energetic patterns if we have grown and nurtured them ourselves.

We discuss your needs, the space you have, and with some simple meditation visualisation techniques, connecting you into your space – we can go as deep and elaborate, or as simple as you wish, you can connect in to your space, and your health, and discover what it is that you need to start growing. One of the joys and part of the magic of connecting with the elements and nature is that it can be as slow and subtle as you like, it evolves. And by tapping into and connecting with nature, we actually tap into and connect with our hidden selves, our inner wisdom, and that creates deep healing.

Once I have come out and had a consultation with you and we have established your needs, where possible I will be able to give you seeds or cuttings from my own magical healing garden. These will always be organic and have the magical energies of my own garden elementals and spirits within them, which will empower your own garden. Or we can go out onto the land that surrounds your home and find the plants that are growing around you, and that will be speaking to you on an energetic level, vibrating with your own garden and energy.

Creating The Medicines & Witchy Workshops

I run small workshops from my cabin that will help to show you how to make simple infusions, teas, syrups and tinctures from the plants that you grow. As well as creating herbal sacred smoking mixes, energy clearing (smoke) sticks and foraging and making classes. This will connect with the women’s circles that I run – all designed to help empower you to heal yourselves and your families, to strengthen your connection to yourself, to nature and each other. (for more information on these events sign up to my newsletter, or go to my linktr.ee or see eventbrite).

I can create a scared space where we choose and create incense blends or herb blends that run inline with the seasons and cycles, or any other special meaningful event you wish to mark. (See my Celebrant page for more details about the incense blending ceremony)

Prices vary

Find Out More

If this way of living, being and healing resonates with you, please contact me for more details. I have a newsletter that I send out every 6 weeks or so, to coincide with the pagan calendar, the wheel of the year, and so if you’d like to know more about how to work more in tune with the seasons and cycles, you can sign up to that.

I also run a Facebook page that has its own private group, The Green Witch Women’s Magical Development Circle – a gentle way for women to connect with like-minded people and explore their own developing spirituality, with no pressure to be anything other than what they are in that moment.

I have a YouTube channel where I post meditations and the odd light- hearted videos on how to make easy herbal remedies.

Costs; Because this is such a bespoke service, and involves a lot of at home planning and research I charge my hourly rate of £50 an hour for the magical garden planning. The workshops will all have their own prices depending on the duration and materials involved. As they evolve and the dates are created they will be advertised as events on the Facebook page, the website and in the newsletter.

I look forward to working with you in this ancient and traditional Wise Woman way.

Much Love

Sam XXX