Now that Beltaine festival has come and gone, and the Hawthorn tree has flowered, the beginning of summer has finally arrived! This means that we’ve begun our CommuniTea project in earnest now, and this month saw our first session taking place at the Willow Garden in the Calders in Wester Hailes.
We gathered a group of about 20 adults & children together for our first community herbal harvest of the year. The idea of the project is to bring people together across the area to grow and forage herbs to dry and process into herbal teas to distribute across the area and to use in our clinic. This first session involved picking Hawthorn blossoms (which are the most abundant any of us have ever seen this year!) as a gentle cardiovascular tonic and medicine for anxiety and emotional unrest. In a second session we also harvested Plantain, a very healing tissue herb for the respiratory system.
Now they are both drying in the Willow Garden’s shed and will be processed later on, together with other harvests from wild herbs and the plants that various community groups are growing in their gardens.
Wester Hailes Community Herbal Clinic
