How to Design the Perfect Apothecary Garden: A Beginner’s Guide to Medicinal Herbs & Herbalism

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re enjoying the beauty of Spring wherever you are. Over here, we’re still dealing with some unexpected snow, so we haven’t quite gotten our hands dirty in the garden just yet. But don’t worry, I’ve got a brand-new gardening video to keep you inspired while we wait for the warmer days.

In today’s video, we’re diving into the world of herbalism and designing the perfect apothecary garden (also known as a physic garden). We’ll start by exploring the basics of medicinal herbs, then I’ll introduce you to a variety of easy-to-grow plants that have powerful healing properties. Finally, I’ll walk you through the steps of designing your own custom medicinal herb garden that fits your needs and space.

Whether you’re a beginner gardener or a seasoned pro, this video will give you all the tips and inspiration to get started on creating a garden that’s both beautiful and functional. 🌱✨

👇 Tell me in the comments below – what’s your favorite medicinal herb, and how do you use it? Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more gardening tips and design ideas!

Happy Gardening! 🌻
Anna

What if your garden could read your mind? What if every leaf, every flower, every root growing outside your door was there to support you? Your mood, your stress, your sleep, your skin, your soul. Today, I’m going to show you how to design an apothecary garden that’s not just beautiful, but deeply personal as well. One that’s rooted in what you love, what you struggle with, and what your body and heart are quietly asking for. Hi, I’m Anna Fable. Stay tuned till the end of the video because I will be designing an apothecary garden in real time and also harvesting and foraging some herbs that are growing despite all the snow we’ve had to create a wonderful wild tea that has four to five times more vitamin C than orange juice. The basics of herbalism. From mushrooms to moss, from ferns to fennel, all around the world, we have been turning to plants to heal us throughout history. Now, most of us are familiar with a few of the most common medicinal plants. Things like elderberry and echynatia for their immune boosting properties. Lavender for its soothing, calming and relaxing qualities. But each of these plants is unique and we absorb them differently. So, we have to take each of these plants and learn the best way for us to use them. And there are a number of different ways that we can prepare these so that we can really get all the benefits from each of them. So I’m sure you’ve heard of medicinal teas. These are hot water infusions. And all of these are just different ways of extracting those properties from the plant that we want, those healing medicinal properties from the plant and getting it into our bodies into or onto our bodies. So medicinal teas, these are the herbal infusions. But when we have really kind of tough or woody plant material, think things like bark or pine, you know, needles, pine needles, which is something we’ll be foraging for later in the video. It’s really helpful to make a decoction. This is where you take a plant matter and you simmer it in hot water to kind of break down that plant matter. And you want to make sure that it has a lid on top so that you’re trapping those volatile oils. And you want to do the same thing for a tea. So if you have a tea, you just want to make sure that you’ve got a cap on it, a lid on your tea while it is brewing, while it’s steeping, so that you can make sure that all of those volatile oils stay in the beverage that you’re going to be drinking. But there are so many other ways that we can do this. You know, things like tinctures for concentrated boost of healing properties. you know, powders, syrups, things like elderberry syrup like we talked about or even lilac syrup and even salves and puses. These are great topical uses. Um, something like a chundula salve, sort of like a hand balm is great for eczema. So, I have pretty bad eczema. I’m not sure if you can see it. And so, chundula salve is really helpful for that. or ptuses, you know, thuya oxidentalis, which is, you know, the the arborvite, you thuya green giant that a lot of people have in their landscapes. So, you can see them all around and a lot of landscapes throughout the United States. So, that white cedar is great for making a pus that you can just place on any areas where you have maybe muscle pain or soreness or even arthritis. So, those are some of the most kind of common ways that we can work with those plant extractions that we can work with herbalism. There are around 30,000 medicinal plants in use today. Just for reference, one of the books that I love to use for my herbalism is called Using Plants for Healing. And this covers 250 medicinal plants. There are 30,000. And there are thousands of new plants being discovered every single year. So, there’s a lot out there, but the most deadly thing that you’re going to encounter out there is your lack of knowledge. So, really foster your curiosity. I think by watching this video, you’re already doing that. And as always, just make sure that you consult your doctor or your healthcare practitioner before ever ingesting something or trying a new practice. Categories of medicinals. Herbalism can be a little bit overwhelming. So I want to break it down to into a few different categories so that it’s a little bit more beginner friendly. So first I want to talk about adaptogens and nervines or nervines. So these are both here for really supporting our nervous system calming down our nerves. These are things like adaptogens are kind of more about that long-term effect going for the long-term route. You want to do these as sort of the foundational level of your herbalism practice. If you’re struggling with something like anxiety or stress now, on a day-by-day basis, if you’re just like right now in this moment, I need something to just calm my nerves. I just had a stressful phone call or just dealt with this or whatever it might be, that’s when a nervian is great to really play around with because those sort of work instantly. An adaptogen, a great example of that would be ashwagandha, rayi, uh mushrooms, and a nervine would be something like lavender, chamomile, rose, lemon balm. Those work instantaneously to just calm and soothe our nervous system. So along this sort of calming, soothing route are the next category, which are going to be our sedatives and our hypnotics. So these are they mean business. They’re more serious, you know, as the name would suggest, seditive. So, these are going to be really sedating. So, we’re thinking things like Valyan root, hops, California poppy, and wild lettuce. Now, these ones are very, very potent. So, if you’re really struggling with insomnia, or something like that, just be aware that I would never take any of these during the day. That would be something just to make sure that you’re leaving to the evening when you’re going to fall asleep cuz they will really conk you out. Our next category is carminatives. And these are going to aid in your digestion. Think ginger and fennel, peppermint, things like that. And next up, we have neutropics. These are going to be your brain boosters. If you’ve ever heard of rosemary, rosemary for memory, they use rosemary for Alzheimer patients, and it’s really, really helpful for sort of recalling memory. That’s a great one, one of these neurotropics. GKO increases that cerebral circulation. Uh, cacao is really great for that. And and like I said, rosemary. These are really gonna help cognitive performance, brain health. Walnuts as well. That’s not so much about herbalism, but in terms of plantings, if you were able to plant a walnut tree, walnuts are fantastic for brain health. So are pecans as well. And then there are so many categories. We also have things like aringents. These are most commonly used topically, but there are a lot of different astringents that you can also use internally for internal treatments. But the most common astringent I think is probably witch hazel which can be used as a toner. So since our approach to apothecary gardening is really a holistic one. It makes sense that each of these plants comprised of many different elements you know often fall into more than one category. So lemon balm for example is a carminative and also a nervime. So Michelle Robinette who’s a very inspiring registered herbalist I love what she says about herbalism. It’s not about symptom and remedy. It’s more about inquiring about the cause of the issue. So, herbalism really isn’t about chasing a symptom. It’s about listening to your body, listening to that symptom, to what that imbalance is trying to say, and then turning to the land. A symptom is your body’s way of speaking. And a plant is one way of answering. before you begin what you love and what you need. So, now that we have a general idea of what herbalism is, let’s create an apothecary garden that’s specific to you. So, now I’d like you to do a little exercise for me. I want you to start with two simple lists. The first list, I want you to really focus on what you love in the garden. What are some of your favorite fragrances? What are your some of your favorite plants? What are your some of your favorite colors in the garden? What are some of the aspects that you really love about your gardening space or that you really want to invite into your garden? And then on the other list, I want you to write the things that you want support for kind of your garden needs. So, what is that medicine cabinet filled with? Is it things to support your sleep? Maybe you’re struggling with insomnia. Is it things to support your anxiety? Is it things for digestion? Is it going to be things to give you energy and really help boost your energy and focus? So, your garden becomes a mirror and each plant is a reflection of your individual needs and your preferences in the garden. That’s really what garden design of any kind is all about. It’s making it as specific and personal to you as possible. And that’s a fantastic thing about apothecary gardens because they really are about not only your preferences and more of that aesthetic take, but it’s also about the way you feel in the garden and the way that the garden makes you feel, the way that these plants help you inside and out. So they are kind of these emotional salves, this emotional balm, a little act of hope in planting all of your little plants in the garden. So before you run out to the store and start buying plants, take a pause. You know, this isn’t about trends or just sort of fast aesthetics. This is a lot deeper than that. It’s really about you. So just pause and ask yourself, what do I want more of? What do I crave more of in my life? Is it peace, calm, energy, focus? For me, my gateway into apothecary gardening was really about sleepless nights. And that’s when I learned about lemon balm and catnip and rose and lavender and chamomile. And suddenly, my garden became more than a peaceful space. It really became my medicine cabinet, a beginner’s garden. The best beginner friendly plants for allaround well-being. So, I could do an entire video about this subject, and please do let me know down below if you’d like me to do that. But now, we’re going to talk about matching your plants to your needs. So, now it’s time to take all these disperate pieces, you know, what you love in the garden and what you need. So, we’ve got, you know, roses and sleep, and we’re going to bring them together, kind of merge all of this information together. So, we have your garden likes, your personal needs, and so now we’re going to combine them together for your garden needs. And this is now going to be sort of your comprehensive plant list, your shopping list for this season. So this is when we can start to have entries like lemon balm, anxiety, low energy, nettle, focus, rosemary. So the way that we can do this is you have your list of your needs and then you just want to start to investigate plants that match those different healing benefits. So I’ll share a few different resources later on. A fantastic way of doing this other than books and the internet and things like that is to go to your local herbalist. Very often we’ll have either an herbal shop in town, a local herbalist, or maybe even a farmer who’s growing these kinds of plants. Or you can go to a natural food store or a naturopath in your area to sort of ask them certain questions about what you’re struggling with. That’s a great place to start. The internet is obviously great and different books and resources are going to be fantastic as well. I’ll talk about these a little bit more later, but here are just a few sort of general ideas. So, for sleep and for calm, you could really try a beautiful herbal infusion, a nice tea with lemon balm, lavender, chamomile, and rose. For digestion, maybe you’re struggling with some digestive issues. You could try fennel, chocolate, peppermint is one of my favorites. You could try colundula for focus. You could try rosemary and sage salviaicolis. So again, once you have an understanding of what you need, what you want to really focus on, what you want support with, start to find, you know, collect some data, find those things that are going to be able to support you with that. So I have several books on herbalism, but again, my favorite one that I turn to time and time again, very well thumbmed, is Using Plants for Healing by Nelson And one of the things that he sort of talks about is that sometimes when we try sort of traditional medicine, we’ll fix one area and then another area will worsen. And so then he talks about how we’ve sort of shifted and a lot of us are becoming more interested in uh remedies which grandma used to take. His whole principle is kind of about using science and nature together and having them work as allies. And he uses a quote from the former president of the American Medical Association which says, “Home remedies probably always will have a place in the treatment of mankind’s aches and pains.” Folk medicine has to its credit many important contributions to scientific medicine. It will continue to have a strong appeal as long as gaps in our scientific knowledge exist. So it really is about marrying science and home remedies, science and nature. This one is specifically about the Americas. So we have here different medicinal remedy remedies from Mexico and things like that. It’s mostly plants that are native to the Americas. And so in the beginning it breaks down all of the different sort of ailments that are referenced in the book. It breaks down all of the different categories of medicinals. It breaks down what things like infusions are. So it’s a really helpful allound book. And with each plant it mentions not only the Latin name but also the family and all of the common names for the plant. So here we have this aristoloia, serpentaria, Virginia snake root, serpentaria, pelican flower, sangrel, birthroot and snakeweed, armisia here, armisia, absynthium, wormwood, absin, mataroot, mugwart, ming wart, old woman. Calm down. And then it’ll give you all of the examples of the ways in which it can be used, its history, what it has been used for in the past, how it can be used at home, where it grows, things like that, ways to identify it. It’s a fantastic book. So, if you can find something like this, I found this. I think my nana had this. It’s from like the ‘ 70s or something. But you can, you know, I’ve got herbalist books from old thrift shops and tag sales and things like that. or you can just go to your library. But those are some of my favorite books to collect. I love collecting herbalism books cuz you can just sort of pick them up and flick through them as and when. So now that you’ve got an idea of how plants can really support you, start to pick the ones that you’re most interested in growing that are the most beautiful of that list. So for me things like roses, npida or catnip, cat mint, um hissups are a wonderful medicinal, lavender, rosemary, all lemon balm, all of these things kind of fit into my personal color palette and what I love for my cottage garden. think, you know, think colors like blues, soft purples, ivories, soft pinks, and you can find these things, you know, roses that are going to be in those in that same color palette. So, all of those for me fit really well into my apothecary garden, into my cottage garden, and they fit into my gardening style in general. So, try to find the center of that ven diagram. you know, the things that you’re struggling with and the different plants that you really love and are interested in growing and see what fits in the center of that. And that’s where you can begin your plant list. And you don’t need 50 plants. Start with five plants that speak to your needs right now. Then really dive in and learn everything you can about those plants. Discover herbal infusions with those five plants that you love to drink. Make some tinctures and really perfect those and see which ones you like best. You know, perfect a morning energizing smoothie using your medicinals from your garden or even a cozy nighttime drowsy sleep infusion. You can always grow your garden just like you can always grow your wellness. So, start small and then expand from there. Designing with intention. So, you want to really design your garden with ritual in mind. Really think about how you’re going to use your space. Think about how you’ll interact with your garden. You know, a patch for tea herbs near your back door, a calming corner where you can sit and breathe in some gorgeous aromatics like lavender and rosemary. You know, paths running through the garden that lead you to harvest what you need. Placing a few pots on your balcony is a fantastic way to begin. And just make sure that your medicinals, just like they are in your medicine cabinet, maybe above your sink, are placed easily in your garden so that they’re very easy and convenient for you to access. Maybe right next to a path or easy to sort of reach over and grab. You want to understand everything you can about each plant so that as it feeds you, you can also feed it. So, learn the lighting requirements, the soil needs, the watering requirements of each of your beautiful medicinals. You know, these are your new friends. So, let’s try and give them everything that they want. So, a few easy kind of beginner friendly plants that you can play around with for your apothecary garden are hissups, lavender, echgonatia, lemon balm, rosemary, lemon verbina, chocolate peppermint, always in pots, and pineapple sage. You know, these all have very similar light watering and soil requirements. So, they would be a fantastic sort of beginner starter kit for your apothecary garden. Your apothecary garden can feel more than functional. It can really feel like a sanctuary. And I really like adding repetition to create harmony and balance throughout the garden borders. And playing around with the the different leaf structures of our medicinals and the flower structures and colors can be really really helpful to create more of that cohesion and to create a design that feels very peaceful. So, sort of an example of some of these pairings at the front of a border, you could imagine something like you could do thyme maybe as a ground cover. That’s a great medicinal. You could also use on the sort of second level up if you wanted to do a graduated border. You could do something like a very strappy kind of upright rosemary with those zingy blue flowers and with that dark green foliage. And then next to that, you could have a very whimsical kind of sprawling lemon balm with its vibrant lime green serrated heart-shaped leaves. And then next to that, you could have that gray, blue, green, gauous foliage of lavender. Again, similar habit to the rosemary, but a totally different color leaf and very different color blooms. those gorgeous lavender blooms, those spires of purple flowers, and then maybe some medicinal geraniums next to that to create an interest in those kind of war warm looking leaves of the geranium. And then taking those plants and repeating those throughout the border on either side. That’ll create cohesion, but also interest because it’ll look somewhat different. All of the plants kind of pair with each other and play off each other really beautifully. And then your next layer up after that, you could play around with maybe a blue hissup and a beautiful echgonia perparia, pink purpley flowers on those kind of bad mitten birdie like floral structures. Gorgeous, gorgeous repeated back and forth. And then behind that, you could have your shrub could be an elderberry and lilac repeated back and forth. Gorgeous. and and those bloom typically sometimes at different times. I suppose where it depends on where you live, but those that you could have kind of a staggered bloom time for your entire border. And then you could add some pines in there as well for some winter interest. So you have some winter interest, you have, you know, foliage interest with all the different foliages that we talked about, foliage colors and shapes and textures and different flower interest as well. And then it doesn’t have to feel so much like a vegetable patch or like it’s very functional and kind of industrial. It just will feel like a beautiful cottage garden that you happen to be, you know, out harvesting amongst all of these beautiful flowers, harvesting the flowers and also being surrounded by flowers as well. So you can have an entirely medicinal apothecary garden that’s elegant, that’s elevated, that’s romantic, and that’s really cohesive. So instead of having your apothecary garden or your physic garden, it’s also called kind of incorporated into the rest of your garden design, maybe you want to have a specific area that’s just for your apothecary garden. So the way that this has often been done in the past was to do a knot garden or in France they call it a part garden. So what they’ll often do is to take one structural plant and sort of sketch out a pattern typically something like a Celtic knot you know so that then you use those structural plants to create that pattern in the border and then you plant up with other medicinals typically in contrasting colors within whatever that pattern is. So, let’s say a rosemary hedge that’s designed in sort of a knot pattern. And then in each of the little pieces of the knot, maybe you have lemon balm in one, maybe you have lavender in another, maybe you have some clary sage in another, maybe you have a little bit of ech e echgonatia in the other one. So, that’s a really beautiful way of creating a really intentional space. It’s going to require a lot of thought, a lot of planning, but it’s a really beautiful way of creating that physic garden in your own backyard. So, now let’s talk about some beginner equipment that you’re going to need to have. What I would suggest, I mean, you can really do this with anything, but some of the things that I’m really grateful that I do have are baskets. A harvesting basket. I love having these. I have them kind of all over the house. They’re hanging up in the kitchen. They’re here. One down there. I have them kind of all over the place. It’s really, really handy to have a harvesting basket and some harvesting shears, keeping them nice and sharp. Try to have one pair that you specifically use for harvesting your medicinals. I really like using a pair of kitchen shears for that. You know, just buying a pair of kitchen shears and designating it for that. But it is really nice to have a pair of shears that are specifically for your medicinals so that you can kind of store them with your basket. I always love having some gardening gloves. I have a pair that are just basically some opera gloves that I use for harvesting because they’re they’re really handy. So, here they are. They’re sort of like a vegan suede. And the reason I like them is because when I usually wear gardening gloves, they’re so big on my fingers. I have quite small hands and quite small fingers. And they’re usually so big that I can’t really do the intricate, delicate work that I need to do. But these fit so nicely on my hands. Plus, I can prune roses and, you know, things that are going to be a little bit hard, thistles, uh, and, you know, nettle and things like that. And I can play around and harvest those things without actually getting through to my hand cuz they’re quite they are quite thick. So, yeah, that’s I don’t know. I’m sure there are some really nice gardening gloves. I just haven’t happened to find them. I would love to make some because they are kind of hard to find ones that I like the look of. And I like that these just look sort of I don’t know kind of plain and to me they look kind of elegant compared to those like bright green ones and things. But and then having a drying rack is really helpful for me. This this is really simple. I just have an old birch branch that I have hanging in my kitchen. I have another one over here as well. But having a birch branch and then I use twine, just some good hard twine to wrap the bundles that I’m wanting to dry and just hang them up to dry. And I like to hang them up to dry in areas that are quite dry in the house. Typically, this room and our kitchen are quite dry areas as opposed to something like a bathroom, which is going to be harder for it to dry in. And then you’re just going to want different size glass jars. So, this is actually my apothecary cabinet right behind. And as you can see, maybe you can’t see. I’m almost all out cuz we’re at the end of the season. So, but we have all of my kind of medicinals from the garden in the bottom. I have my larger jars on this side and then my smaller glass jars on this side. And then having some labels for them so that you know the date, you know, you know exactly what the plant is and you know the date that you harvested it and the date that you jarred it so that you’re able to really ensure that you’re not using anything that’s too old. And you can get these from anywhere. You know, you can get these from tag sales, garage sales, you can get them from thrift stores. You can buy them on Amazon or at the dollar store. Just make sure that you prep them properly. You know, boil them in hot water and make sure that they’re nice and sterile before putting any of your plants in them. And then for, you know, consuming the extractions or developing the extractions, you want to have something like a tea ball or, you know, tea bags. You could have compostable tea bags, which I really like. Uh there’s also little individual tea infusers. It’s just sort of like a glass vial that you can kind of hang or clip onto the side of your your tea mug. And that way you can just create your own individual portion of loose tea that you can place in there. Or you could have something like a larger teapot or a tea press, like a brunch press for tea that you could use for sort of larger weekly batches that are kind of that medicinal grade if you wanted to even steep them overnight. Again, just making sure that when you’re steeping your tea or or simmering it that you have a cap on it so those volatile oils don’t kind of escape into the air. And then if you plan on playing around with tinctures and things like that, dark glass vials with eyroppers are really helpful for that. You want something that’s dark, dark glass just because you, you know, tinctures can be light sensitive and so you want to make sure that that’s all copathetic. And then I would suggest that you have a notebook to record all of your findings. You know, this tea made me feel like this. This one really helped with my digestion. I was able to sleep really well when I had this blend. When I added this to it the following week, I didn’t sleep as well. You know, having that. And that’s really part of the holistic approach to to to this practice is to be aware. You know, we’re trying something then we’re checking in. always being aware of how our body is responding to what’s going on, what we’re putting in it. You know, in a lot of ways, our garden is a real practice in therapy. They have even started prescribing gardening to, you know, mental health patients in the UK. I’ve seen specials on that, how they’re be doctors are beginning to prescribe gardening. So, I really love that idea. And just kind of checking in with that as well. How are you feeling having been in the garden, been outside, maybe even putting your feet in the earth and your hands in the soil? How do you feel? Are you feeling better? Are you feeling a little bit brighter? And then if you are going to be foraging, if that’s something that you’re interested in, then just making sure you have a local foraging guide or manual or something like that, making sure that you have a guide that you can really turn to. Go out with an expert and make sure that you know what you’re doing. Again, always check with a, you know, medical expert before taking anything in, before ingesting anything, using anything topically, but also checking with locals because you really, knowledge is the most important thing here. And then then the last thing is, you know, references. References for that knowledge, for gaining that knowledge is really, really important. Books, you can go on the internet and check different forums, especially, you know, you could check in with Facebook groups in your in your area. going and talking to a naturopath in your area, talking to a local herbalist, you know, seeing if you can talk to a local farmer. A great way of meeting these people is going to your local farmers markets. Try to go, you know, find a farmers market in your area and then just go up and see if they, you know, maybe the farmers in your area aren’t growing herbs or medicinals, but maybe they know somebody who is who they can get you in touch with. That’s a great way of just sort of broadening your scope and really having a deeper connection to not only the earth, the plants, your health, but also your community. And if I remember, I will try to list some other fantastic books that you can get your hands on, unlike something like this, which is I don’t know if it’s available anymore. It was written a long time ago. So, now I thought we would go out, make some tea, and then design our apothecary garden. Sound good? All right. So, the first thing I want to harvest is some of the earliest shoots of our lemon balm, the bringer of gladness. And right now in the garden, we have some yarao. We have some npida and some hissup coming up. But we have birch, birch bark that we could forage. This is great anti-inflammatory. It’s got great for vitamins and vital nutrients. Great for dry skin. It’s an immune booster. And for that, you’re going to want to remove the outer corky bark and sort of shave beyond that to that green bark, that live bark for for tea. So, we might use some of that, but definitely some pine needles. Now, white pine grows native here, and we have lots of it on our property. And white pine has four to five times more vitamin C than orange juice. So, let’s harvest some medicinals from the wild lard. So, for this tea, which is really lovely, we did the lemon balm, some white pine. I decided not to do the birch because we didn’t have any recently fallen branches from our birch trees on the property. Underneath the corky layers and the layers where you peel off the birch, underneath that is the sort of green layers, and that’s where you want to harvest for your tea. So, I didn’t really want to do that and we didn’t really have any available that was right for foraging. So, this is our pine needle tea and this has, like I said, four to five times more vitamin C than orange juice or a lemon. And it’s really tasty. I put some of the lemon balm. Then from the apothecary cabinet, I put some chocolate peppermint and just a little bit of chamomile. But the chamomile is kind of powdery now, but I’ll harvest some more for this year hopefully. Georgie has joined us. My little oneeyed pup. So, I might see if she wants to sit on my lap. Hi, sweet girl. Come sit in my lap. Come here, baby. Okay, okay, you going to put your hands on the table? So, as you can see, we have a lovely AI generated backyard here that I am going to create into a beautiful fizz garden. Does that sound exciting, Georgie? Or does that sound boring? So, let’s go ahead and begin by deciding on what we want to do for this space. I don’t think I want to do a not garden. I’m going to do I feel like this is getting kind of sy with me. A path and then stuff on either side. But, let me think. Let me see if they have any rosemary first. Let me see if they have the things I want to use. Mhm. Yeah. I’m going to do just a little path and then we’ll we’ll plant around the path. What do you think, George? Oop. Careful. Is that so nice? Do you want me to put you down or are you having fun? Good girl. So, then we’ll add some texture. Let’s have this to match. Cool. All right. Now, let’s draw some borders on either side. And let’s say for this one, we’ll go ahead and keep some of the grass cuz I usually take out all the grass. So, we’ll keep some of the grass and we’ll keep those thuyas and let’s just add some mulch in here. And the same on the other side. Again, I’m going to keep some grass and then we’ll just add our mulch and we’ll create kind of a a little bit of a swivel so that it’s it feels nice and natural. Okay, you kind of get the picture. So, let’s see if they have some of our taller plants. I’m going to use some birch cuz why not? So this is a small birch. We’ll add three on either side. A lot of medicinals prefer full sun. So let’s do some pines. Let me make sure that mugo pine is edible. This is one of the medicinals. Yes, it’s mugo pine. Pinus mugo has been used medically for respiratory issues and joint pain. The essential oil is known for its antiseptic and expectrant qualities, upper respiratory infections, bronchitis, asthma, as well as rheumatism and muscular stiffness. So, let’s add in a couple of mugo pines. Might make this little area a little bit bigger. So, I’m kind of putting these pines in between the birch. We’ll just do a rose, the specific medicinal roses that you want to plant. Damus rose is a fantastic one. In the physic garden, the apothecary garden in Avenue that I showed you a little tour of, they use Damusk Rose. So, so I’m going to do some rose bushes here. The program I’m using is called Icecape for those of you who are interested. I think they have a lot of stuff. I think it’s Yeah, it’s a pretty nice program. Pretty easy to use as well. Great. I mean, already that looks super structural, very elegant and elevated, but I do think I’m going to need more growing space. So, I think I’m going to extend our border. I should have just skipped out on the grass in between, but that’s okay. All right. Next up, let’s do some hissup and some echgonia. So, rose is, you know, is a can be a bunch of different things like a lot of them. Rose is um fantastic as a nervine. I love using rose in bedtime teas or kind of that 400 p.m. when I’m starting to kind of switch gears into more of a chill kind of energy. Uh and then you know it’s also an astringent. It can be used as a toner. It’s uh also yeah it’s a rose is a it’s a fantastic one and you can yeah harvest the flowers. Rose hips are also really great that you can use uh medically. You can do like a rose hip jelly, which is kind of fun. Um the pine needles like we did here, you know, simmering those low and slow, 10 to 15 minutes. And then I poured that straight into our tea pot here along with the hot water. Just a little bit of hot water that was already steeping the rest of them. And then I poured that on top. And overall, the blend is minty kind of, you know, with that chocolate peppermint, but it’s very earthy, kind of woodsy. It’s really nice. All right, so let’s do some hissup. Let’s do some golden jubilee and some kudos ambrosia. So, I think I’ll do those two next to each other. Great. And I’m just going to repeat these down the back. So, there are sort of second or third story plants. I like how the foliage is different colors. That’s nice. The the flowers are different and those are going to bloom for most of the season which is really nice. Starting for us around midseason and then those will bloom for like I said most of the season. Let’s do some echgonatia. So I’m just going to add some little elements to that echgonatia kind of popping through here. So those are going to be next to our hissips there. I think that’s sweet. They’re like bigger than our roses. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? There. I want to see if we have some passion flour that I can grow up that fence. Let’s see if they have any other colors. They just have this salmon color. So, that’s what we will use. And I’ll put this on the fence behind so that that whole wall is masked. Yeah, I think that looks really pretty. I’m going to get rid of the grass. I keep Yeah, I’m going to get rid of the grass. And we’re just going to we’re going to plant this whole area because I feel like it. So, you can go out there and harvest to your heart’s content. Great. So, passion flower. Um, great for sleep. Eating in sleep. What else do I want to do? We didn’t do any elderberries. Why don’t we plunk some elderberries on either side of the door there? Could do some witch hazel. In our area, the elderberries stay on the smaller side. So, we’ll kind of imagine that that’s what’s going on here. So, we’ll have these on either side of the door. I think that’ll be really, really pretty. For some elderberry syrup, lovely. And you just want to make sure that you have a variety of elderberry that’s grown for the berries, you know, instead of a lot of elderberries are grown for the foliage. Now, let’s do some cat mint, some napa. One of my all-time favorite plants. Love it so much. Such a beautiful plant. I might add some witch hazel later. Now we’ll repeat the cat mint along the border. Lovely. Let’s do common white yarao. That’s really nice winter interest as well. And we’ll repeat that. And I want some rosemary. Rosemary blooms super early, which I really like. And in a lot of areas, it is evergreen. It’s really beautiful. It’s a great hedging plant. If you have not used rosemary in your garden, I highly recommend it. I’m just going to pop this here. Kind of one on either end of the garden. Kind of pretty. Then let’s see if we have some chamomile. Okay, let’s plant some chamomile. Very beautiful wispy foliage. So, we’ll do some chamomile in the front of the border and then repeat that throughout the border. So, now we’re kind of doing some ground covers. And I am doing a graduated kind of look for the front of the border, but you can you can really do whatever you want when it comes to planting your borders. You don’t have to do that kind of very typical graduated look in the border. Spoke about that in designing a garden border video, which I can link up here if you haven’t seen that. Let’s repeat it once more down at the very end. Chamomile. Such a great one. Falls under so many different categories in herbalism. really a a fabulous plant. Thyme. Thyme is obviously known really well for cooking. Um, but it’s also a it’s a really great one. Great medicinal as well. So, we’ll pop some of this in the front of the border. We’re getting pretty close. So, it’s under balm lemon, but not lemon balm. And it’s under Melissa lemon balm on this program. So, if you’re using this program, but see those beautiful sort of heartshaped serrated leaves. I’m glad we found some lemon balm. It’s so pretty. It’s one of the first ones to really come up in the herb garden as well. It’s I love it. I’m so excited to play around with it this year. And let’s do some lavender. I was going to skip it because it can look so similar to the NPA, but I think here we’ll be able to find a different one. So, we’ll kind of spread that out in the areas where we have some more space. We’ll put that throughout. And all of these things are going to attract pollinators as well. So, we’ll put it in front of the thyme. Thyme is fantastic. It’s got all kinds of vitamins. Really wonderful one for skin conditions, for coughs and sore throats and digestive issues. Any more space for a lavender? See if we can tuck one more here. those beautiful little spires. All right, let’s see. I think that’s it. Do we want to add There’s a lot in there. Do we want to add a little witch hazel? Let’s add one. Why not? Let’s add it over here and on the other side. Coming over like that. Lovely. There we go. I think that looks so lovely. So, you have a lot of immune boosters. You have nervines and you have wonderful digestive aids, sleep and calming and relaxation and yeah immune boosters and things you can use topically. Lots of things you can make tinctures and teas out of decoctions. It’s just a wonderful garden and it looks really really beautiful. I’m not sure how that’s I probably wouldn’t have chosen that sort of salmon pink along for the passion flower, but that was the only one they had. But usually the passion flower is that really sort of that creamy ivory white with that vibrant purple purple blue and then the squiggles inside. They’re just so so interesting. One of my friends told me that if I was a flower, I would be a passion flower. So I I have a fondness for passion flowers. Passion vine. Anyway, I think it looks pretty good. Let me know what you think. Would you want this to be your back garden? Would you want it to be a little bit more tidy? Would you want a not garden? Would you want it? It’s very tidy, but would you want it to be less plants and more lawn? A little bit more breathing space? I love a jumble. I love just this big kind of jumble of flowers and plants and everything everywhere. Very cottagey. That’s my style. So, I’d love to hear about yours. I think that’s nice. Cheers. So hopefully you found some inspiration in this video for the beginnings of a garden that knows how to care for you. Your apothecary garden doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be yours, rooted in what you love, what you need, and the slow remembering that healing is a partnership between you and the earth. Thank you for joining me on this quiet, slow little journey. And I really hope it inspires you to start one of your own, even if it’s just a little pot of lemon balm on your window sill. If this video spoke to you in some way, I’d love for you to leave me a comment down below and let me know what medicinal you’re most drawn to. And if you’d like more slow herbal living, more cozy garden days, don’t forget to subscribe. Until next time, be well, stay curious, and may your garden always bring you home. Bye. [Music]