Medicinal Herb Garden Planning for Remedies

By Sharon Vile And The Mother Earth News Editors
Updated on March 6, 2023
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by Adobestock/JoannaTkaczuk

Make a medicinal herb garden plan from a healing herbs list for time-tested remedies for common ailments.

Since the dawn of history, humans and animals have sought healing from plants. Although many of today’s most popular curatives are compounded in laboratories, there are still vast numbers of commercial remedies whose major medicinal ingredients are derived from green herbs, trees, and shrubs. But you needn’t rely on store-bought products for botanically based medicine: Many of the most common and effective healing plants can be grown in your own healing garden, in a backyard as lovely as it is useful.

Selecting Curatives

There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of plants with medicinal value. While some of these are too tender for North American climates and others grow so rampantly that they’re undesirable in a garden setting, there are still many good candidates from which to choose. Most public libraries and bookstores offer a number of excellent herbals that can help you select the plants most suitable for your needs and your region (a list of recommended titles accompanies this article). Further assistance can be obtained from local nurseries and from catalogs published by mail-order herb suppliers. When ordering or buying herbs, always be sure to refer to plants by their Latin as well as their common names, because popular labels can vary from one area to another.

Although you may want to cultivate only those herbs that relieve simple ailments and complaints, a good medicinal garden often contains some species that are planted strictly for their beauty or their historical interest. Foxglove and male fern, bloodroot and rue, for example, are all handsome plants that are just too powerful for anyone but a highly trained physician, pharmacologist, or herbalist to use safely as internal remedies.

The Essentials

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