Videos

• Click here for the edible and medicinal uses of Lesser Celandine.

• Click here for the edible and medicinal uses of Three-cornered Leek.

The practice:

• the film lasts 5 minutes
• for the best experience, listen with headphones
• find a comfortable place to sit
• make sure to watch in full screen
• stop. breathe. relax
• be aware
• pay attention
• listen and observe
• start the film
• when the film has finished, please leave a comment below

Discover how to craft a revitalising spring detox tonic from wild plants, harnessing dandelion, cleavers, and stinging nettle‘s potent properties.

This short video guides you through the process, highlighting each plant’s benefits and precautions, creating a natural elixir for rejuvenation and balance during the season of renewal.

How To Use

I put 1-2 tablespoons into a regular sized glass of water and drink it, but I like sour drinks, some folks don’t.

You can always sweeten it with something evil like sugar (shriek). I love jaggery, if you have not tried it.

You can also put it in juice, or add it to salad dressings etc. Have a think about other ways you could use it. But for me, it’s in the glass and down the hatch. Simple.

How Long Do You Use It?

I drink it daily, usually in the morning when I wake up. I drink it until I run out or I just lose the desire. Drink until you feel you want to stop. Pay attention to your body’s signals. Your body is deeply wise. Listen to it.

More Info If You Missed My Email

As the gentle warmth of spring awakens the earth, a lush green tapestry adorns the landscape, offering a bounty of wild plants to invigorate and cleanse our bodies.

Among these, Taraxacum officinale (Dandelion), Galium aparine (Cleavers), and Urtica dioica (Stinging Nettle) stand out as powerful allies to create a nourishing spring detox tonic, brimming with potential benefits.

Dandelion, a humble yet mighty plant, has a rich history of usage as a diuretic in traditional folk medicine and modern phytotherapy across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

One study confirmed its efficacy, revealing a diuretic effect in human subjects over a day when using a high-quality fresh leaf hydroethanolic extract.

When using the whole plant from root to tip, this remarkable plant also boasts choleretic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and hepatoprotective properties.

Cleavers (Goosegrass), with its distinctive, clingy nature, is another essential component of our spring tonic.

Traditionally known for its diuretic properties, this versatile plant has been employed as a potent tonic to cleanse and revitalise the body.

Stinging Nettle, though feared for its sting, offers potent diuretic properties, making it a valuable addition to our spring cleanse.

These three plants create a synergistic elixir to rejuvenate and detoxify our systems.

While their potential benefits are enticing, they may also present side effects and interactions with medications, so seek the guidance of a medical herbalist or healthcare professional if any of the following apply to you.

Dandelion, for instance, may interact with diuretic medications and those broken down by the liver.

Stinging Nettle, too, may interact with blood thinners and medications for high blood pressure.

As such, seek the guidance of a medical herbalist or healthcare professional before embarking on this detox journey.

In the spirit of reconnecting with our ancestral roots and embracing nature’s wisdom, this spring tonic offers a chance to cleanse our bodies and refresh our souls.

As the plants reach for the sky, let us, too, go within ourselves to find renewal and balance, cherishing the intricate bond between humans and the natural world.

“Juliette of the Herbs” is a captivating and inspiring documentary film that explores the life and work of the late Juliette de Bairacli Levy, a British herbalist, author, and holistic veterinarian.

Directed by Tish Streeten and released in 1998, the film delves into the fascinating world of herbal medicine and its holistic benefits, taking viewers on a journey through the enchanting landscapes of England, France, Spain, and Greece.

The film opens by introducing Juliette de Bairacli Levy, born in 1912 to a wealthy British family, who was disenchanted with traditional Western medicine.

Juliette set out on a lifelong quest to learn and preserve the ancient wisdom of natural healing from various cultures around the world. She lived among the Gypsies, Romani people, and Bedouins, immersing herself in their customs, languages, and healing practices.

Throughout the documentary, viewers learn about Juliette’s unique perspective on life, which focused on the interconnectedness of all living things, and the importance of living in harmony with nature.

She believed that a healthy lifestyle involved maintaining a balance between the mind, body, and spirit, with an emphasis on proper nutrition, exercise, and the use of natural remedies.

Her deep reverence for the plant world and her passion for holistic healing shaped her influential approach to veterinary medicine, which she documented in her groundbreaking books, including “The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable.”

“Juliette of the Herbs” showcases the protagonist’s invaluable contributions to the field of herbal medicine and natural healing, as well as her pioneering efforts in holistic animal care.

The film presents testimonials from those whose lives have been positively impacted by Juliette’s teachings, demonstrating her lasting influence on the world of alternative medicine.

The documentary weaves in beautiful cinematography of the natural landscapes that shaped Juliette’s journey, from the picturesque English countryside to the rugged, wild terrain of Greece.

The film effectively portrays the intrinsic relationship between humanity and nature, urging viewers to respect and cherish the earth’s healing power.

In addition to chronicling her life’s work, “Juliette of the Herbs” also delves into the personal aspects of Juliette’s life, including her deep spiritual connection to animals and her unwavering commitment to living in accordance with nature’s laws.

It provides a heartfelt and enlightening tribute to a truly remarkable woman whose life’s work transcended cultural and generational boundaries.

“Juliette of the Herbs” is a visually stunning and deeply inspiring film that invites viewers to reflect upon their own relationship with nature and the power of herbal medicine.

It offers a timely reminder of the importance of preserving and honouring the ancient wisdom that has been passed down through generations, and stands as a testament to the extraordinary life and legacy of Juliette de Bairacli Levy.

Having the correct equipment and tools can be of great help when foraging or wildcrafting plants for food and medicine.

Note: Commissions may be earned from the links below.

Here is the list of the books:

• Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants of Britain and Ireland
• Botany in a Day
• Pocket Guide to Wildflower Families
• A Botanist’s Vocabulary
• Francis Rose Wildflower Key
• Collins Wild Flower Guide

Here is the list of tools and equipment:

• Linen bags
• Gathering basket
• Loupe/eyeglass
• Fiskars secateurs
• Taylor’s pocket knife
• Metal ruler
• Pine Tree gloves
• Japanese digging tool/Hori hori
• Drying rack for herbs

Transcription of The Forager’s Toolkit

Today I’m going to take you through a beginner’s foraging toolkit, or a basic foraging toolkit. So gathering, what do we put our pickings into? I really like linen bags. They’re really easy. I fold them up. I can carry one with me all the time.

Linen, because I don’t particularly want my plants to sweat that much. Now, if I’m gathering medicines, then linen’s really important. I don’t want to be putting them into plastic bags. You can go foraging with a plastic bag, you know, a supermarket brand bag, if you really have to. However, plastic’s not very cool. This isn’t about Instagram showing off. This is about gathering our food. So linen first.

Berries – having just said that plastics a taboo – clip top buckets or tubs are really useful. Not essential. I’m trying to get away from plastic as much as possible.

Baskets – This is an old basket. This is enough for me to fill up and get a load of elderflowers, which I’ve been gathering this week. And I will show you at the end of the video, how I go about drying them. If you’re wanting to dry plants. If you are gathering something like elderflowers or flowers that have pollen on you’ll note, this has holes in, right?

So before you go gathering, you’ll need to line it with newspaper because you want that pollen. It also allows the plant and the flowers to breathe, which is important. Do not put them in plastic bags. Honestly, the quality will just deteriorate really quick. They’ll start sweating. The flowers will start sweating and you’ll end up with a less than perfect product

Secateurs – these are essential. You just gather and snip. These are Fiscars. I love these. I like tools. I used to be a cabinet maker. So tools and quality tools are important to me can get away with any old pair of old secateurs, but I like quality kit. Say you want to gather some Willow bark. Okay. You snip off the branches. These will slice through pretty thick branches.

Leaves – use your hands. If you have to use scissors, I haven’t got scissors cause I don’t use scissors. Even nettles. I don’t use scissors, either use a pair of gloves if I’m not feeling up to it or I use my hands.

I don’t really like wearing gloves because it removes me from the gathering process. It’s more a sensory thing. I want to be able to feel the plant in my hand. And one of the reasons I do that is that sometimes say with garlic mustard, you get the young stems coming through and they’re very flexible and you can only really feel which bit is flexible before it starts getting woody further down by bare hands. And I was sensory primal beings and gloves kind of remove us one stage from that. So only really, if you have to.

Roots – Bearing in mind, you need landowner’s permission to dig up roots in Britain.

It’s really important. You commit a criminal offence, otherwise. It looks like a knife. It’s not a knife, it’s a Japanese digging tool and it has measurements on here as well. So I use it a lot. It’s really, really stable. I can chop a root. It’s called a Japanese hor hori. I call it a Japanese digging tool. Japanese tools, Japanese saws, Japanese chisels are world-class quality,

Eyeglass – what a lot of people call an eyeglass, a jewellers glass. It’s actually called a Loupe. I use 10 X magnification. Okay. And the way that you work with the loop, often people will be looking at a loop like this. Thinking it’s a magnifying glass and it’s not a magnifying glass. Okay. Obviously it is a magnifying glass, but not in that traditional Sherlock Holmes, magnifying glass. And so you bring the eyeglass, your eye and you bring the plant towards you. Okay. Until you can see all the really fine detail, they’re really important. If you’re going to ID fans. So, how do you do that?

You get a copy of Francis Rosie’s wildflower key. It will rot your brain initially until your brain clicks and you get what’s going on. It’s very self-explanatory. Take your time. It’s really important to stop. Just trying to ID with photographs.

The problem with photographs is they don’t take you into the really fine detail. That’s important often to discern one species from another species, but I get photographs. I produce photo a photo guide, but it’s one book in your reference library to understand plants. And it’s about slowing down. It’s about taking one plan and getting to know it really well.

So, this is good to having your carrier bag in your backpack. This is a kind of hybrid. This is a mini key without really being a property. That’s a wildflower key. That’s what we call we key out plans. So this is a kind of one that I often recommend to beginners because it does have pictures in it. Yeah, it’s, it’s wild flower key, and it’s pretty good.

It’s pretty good. But you need a whole selection of books. And then Stacy, who’s got the big wild flag. It’s like a break there’s 5,000 species listed. So, you know, how do you narrow down? You find a plant it’s in flower and you want to know what it is? Well, Botany in a day and essential, absolute essential book.

Frank Cook, my plant mentor brought this book to Britain. It’s why people in Britain know about it, even if they don’t know Frank cookies and it’s not a wildflower key, it basically is the pattern method of plant identification. A herbal field guide to plant families of North America. It says, but it’s also for Northern Europe and very relevant for Britain.

So don’t let that put you off and essential book. You find a flower, you’ve got all these species of plants, best ways to know what family it’s in. Once you know what family it’s in. You can go just to the section in the books on that family and start trying to identify it. Must must, must get it for a little book on plant families, which is just absolutely delightful and not many people know about this.

It’s by faith Anstey and she’s the last up in Scotland. I think she does really beautiful books on encouraging you in a non botanical kind of. Academia kind of level, but basic, you know, plant people who are passionate and want to go a bit deeper. This is a beautiful little, um, you’ll find it somewhere online.

If you go to eight weeks.co.uk forward slash toolkit, I will, um, have listed where you can get it. Brilliant little book. Next, you go through this or you go through this and you are going to have to learn a vocabulary. So. I am hypervisual right. So if someone describes something pretty much, um, in a non visual way, which so much of botany Hays, I don’t get it.

I really don’t get it. I was crap at school and teachers used to throw me out because I just asked questions why all the time, um, which didn’t really help. So I’ve had to self-learn auto didactic. So when it comes to botanical vocabulary, I have hunted high and low for a book. That speaks to my cognitive way of learning because we all learn differently.

Some people are hyper visual. Some people can go through a wildflower Cade, and they’ll just get it. The rest of us have to look up what the words say in the book. Look them up in this. This is my go to vocabulary. Forget all the others. If you are a visual learner, Look at that everything is laid out. They describe it to you really well, not in this convoluted language, but they also have blooming drawings that show you what bit you’re meant to be looking at.

This is a godsend. Get it, if you just want a little guy to, well, what’s the food or the medicine once you’ve identified the plastic food or the medicine of that particular plant historically, then this person, Oh, that’s me. I’ve written this book, edible and medicinal wild plants of Britain and Ireland.

And. It’s a quick overview of 48 plants around Britain. He’s just starting out. Trust me 48. That’s way more than you eat. Normally, most people when they farmed plants, they between 20 to 30 species of plants. A knife. We need knives, cutting a STEM, a stoke, cutting a leaf off. We need a knife, but there are legal considerations.

When we carry these little beauties around with us. When I was a kid, you carry a pocket knife around, not a problem. Nowadays, everyone thinks you’re about to murder people. Um, so what’s the legal status. It has to be folding and it can’t have a lock. So those lovely open drives, they have a lock on them.

That’s illegal. All right. The other thing is, is the length of the blade. The length of the blade cannot be more than three inches. All right. That is a three inch blade. Perfectly legal providing it’s folding. And this is a rock solid pen knife. I used to love pen knives as a kid. Um, I don’t like those Swiss army knives.

This has got a lovely feel to it. And, um, I can’t remember who, who made it about the link will be eight weeks.co.uk forward slash toolkit. Right? Get yourself a knife, a tool. Again, these are tools. They’re not weapons. All right. They are tools. And they is an essential bit of the forages toolkit. If you need to peel bark, need to pillar and skins while you’re out foraging, just in case you want to kind of munch on something that is completely not for miss land.

What else? I show you a reader. When you look in one of these books or you look in one of these books, it’s going to tell you to measure bits of the plant. So these are essential. These are really cool. They’re metal. They go down micro, micro millimeters. So you can get really precise, even have a conversion chart on it.

If you’re old school and doing deal in inches, when I’ve gathered Herb’s I need to dry them. So you can put them on newspaper or muslin, but this is a drying rack. And when I’ve got them, I will lay them out. You know, decent, not all bunched up. And this is the quality that comes out in a normally when people dry all the flour, what happens is it goes really Brown and horrible.

This has retained its golden yellow color. This is multi-tiered. So that’s quite hard. And how long that is? That’s most, yeah, that’s six inches high. So we’re not bunching them up. We’re just laying. One lab. Okay. One layer, one layer, one that leaves blossoms, blooms, flowers, um, dry, anything in this and I’ll have it in a garage.

I don’t have a car, so there’s no horrible smells. And it’s called it’s very hot and or warm. So it’s a great drawing. This, these are the flowers dry within two days. Just thought I’d show you that you don’t need it. It’s just piece of kit that I have. That’s it. Thank you for listening.

A short video explaining how to use the flower stems as food. Few people use the flower stems, but it is most probably the tastiest and mildest part to eat.

Further Reading

• Alexanders – A Foraging Guide to Its Food, Medicine and Other Uses

• Carpobrotus edulis has a good, balanced nutritional profile.
• The succulent leaves are a strong antioxidant.
• They can be pickled but can be astringent if harvested incorrectly.
• The juice is antiseptic.
• Hottentot fig has been shown to have anti-neuronflammatory properties, and may add to the improvement of cognitive functions.
• The fruit has a sourish taste.
• Eaten raw, preserved, dried and as a jam.
• It also makes an extraordinary syrup.
• In South Africa, where it is native, the dried fruits are sold in markets as food.
• Fruits are best when they feel like they are going over.

How I got into plants, or how I came back to plants, really, was that I had a digital publishing company up until 2004. I was working seven days a week, 15-hour days.

I didn’t see my daughter grow up. I didn’t see the seasons. And I basically broke down It was hardcore.

It was kickboxing every single day in those early years of the internet. I realised that I had just spent the previous five years in a screen. Basically in a box.

So I had enough money in the bank to leave all that behind. Because it was not good for me.

I had become a drunk and a drug addict. So I had to sort myself out.

I would take the dog down the hedge. I lived in the countryside then. I live in Exeter now. And I just started seeing this green wall and finding these plants.

I pulled them out and then I’d get all these books out of the library and I’d start identifying them. I’d start researching them and looking into their history.

Eighty percent of the plants I was identifying were or had been used as medicinal plants.

I’d always been interested in holistic health as we used to call it back then. And for me food was always kind of the focus. I love my food. I love travelling. I love experiencing cultures through their food systems.

So I started focusing on what was actually edible in the hedgerow and discovered a whole world I didn’t realise I already new. Because I grew up in the countryside, I went to school in the countryside. My great aunts would take me on to Dartmoor in the summer and we’d go foraging. But we didn’t use that word.

Foraging is a word that we use to describe ancient cultures, but it’s a currently modern word. We say “I’m going foraging today”.

We were just country folk, country kids doing country ways.

We’d go out and get sweet chestnuts. We’d have a crafty cigarette at school and cover the stink of tobacco on our breath with wild garlic.

We’d just eat stuff that we knew. But it wasn’t anything special. There was no big deal about it. There was nothing buzzy about it.

When I came back to plants in 2004, all these memories started coming back in quite extreme ways. I remember when I was a boy at 12 years old I had a book.

That book had taught me how to see if there was a badger set still live or how to creep up on deer (not to kill them), but to just observe them. Wind direction etc.

And I remember this line drawing came to mind. It was really, really vivid. It kind of haunted me for about two weeks.

So one day I was walking down in Sidmouth, Devon (where I lived). And I passed a charity shop that I had never been into.

I stopped and walked in and my brain, my rational brain was thinking clothes, but I ended up in front of the bookshelf.

I reached out and I pulled out the first book. I opened that book, and I kid you not. It was exactly the same book, a different edition and it opened on exactly the same page of stalking deer to observe them. The same image that had been haunting my mind for two weeks prior to that.

So spooky stuff like that was starting to happen as my path to well being progressed. And it progressed in alignment with the deeper I was meeting plants.

Initially I was meeting plants from a very rational perspective. I was a rational atheist at that time. And then slowly, things started happening. I started having sensory experiences with plants.

My happiness and my well being went up. My depression would go down and I felt very, very contented.

It got to a point where I just wanted to be absorbed by the earth, by plants. That sounds really hippie, but it was just there.

I was in absolute ecstasy and awe that something as simple as walking down a country lane. Picking and crushing and smelling a plant could have such a profound effect on my well being and happiness.

I never ever intended to be a teacher of plants. I still don’t regard myself as a teacher. I’m just a guide. I know a little bit about plants.

In fact the more I know, the less I know. And one day I met a guy named Frank Cook who many people in the plant communities in America and now over here have heard of.

I filmed him for three hours and at the end he just said, “You need to be teaching plants.”

I went, “No Frank, that’s not the game plan. Robin’s game plan is… I’m doing this as a total break from work that had burned me out, and nearly killed me.”

He said, “No, I think you need to be teaching plants. Just start small. It doesn’t have to be big. Just start teaching people locally.”

So I did and the response was great. People seem to love the way that I tell the stories of plants. Which predominantly comes from my own experience, my own relationship with the individual plants, and also from my research.

As an ethnobotanical researcher I study people, plants and human culture. Plants as food, plants as medicine and plants as utilitarian uses.

Plants are the foundation of human existence. That is why we are here. We could not be here without plants.

Then slowly over time what happened was that even though when I came back to plants I was a rational atheist. Prior to that I’d actually been very interested in spiritual practises.

Particularly contemplative practises. To the point that in my mid-twenties I’d started training to be a priest in a very contemplative tradition.

We studied all the old middle age mystics. The Rhineland mystics, people like Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen. All these kinds of people always had a place in my heart.

I’m not a Christian and I’m not a pagan. I don’t do shamanism or magic. It’s not my world.

There’s a wheel with many spokes on it. My spoke is the contemplative tradition. Which is an emptying out.

It’s an emptying out and waiting to see what one is filled with.

When I go to meet a plant, even one that I don’t know its name, which is actually even better. Because then it’s a bit more zen mind, beginner’s mind. There’s no preconceptions, there’s no projections going on.

I will sit and I will do some practises and just empty myself out and see what comes to mind.

I’m very interested in plant/human relationships and how the messages, the information, the knowing arises within us.

Frank would always talk about these “other ways of knowing about the world”.

To me the natural world talks to us through our imagination.

Look at the Velcro. Mr. Velcro got inspired by Burdock. It’s these simple ways. That if we get out of our own way as humans, and allow the greater and non-human world to fill us, that solutions to the problems of the world come forth.

In the same way the ancient Taoists before Confucius would sit, would contemplate. They would do certain practises to get themselves into a centred, still and empty place.

Then through observation. Awareness practises. They would observe patterns and forms within the natural world that they could then incorporate back into the human world. They created a civilisation as a result that eclipsed anything the people of these Isles were doing.

We were running around in bearskins when the Chinese had a culture that was extraordinary.

The simple act of meeting plant in an empty sense. Of emptying myself out, means I’m filled. Deeply filled and deeply nourished.

Food goes well beyond just putting it in your mouth.