Thursday 6 June, Healing Hedgerows, walk in Battersea Park, London Borough of Wandsworth, starting at 11 a.m. and continuing for c.75 minutes.  For further details please see the events page on this website.

Report:  About 15 people gathered for this event.  As usual it was stressed that the ‘folk’ tended to use common – ‘everyday’ – plants in home medicine; they did not seek out rarities.  Thus we started by discussing dandelion, Taraxacum, before moving on to examine shepherd’s purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris which in the mid 1990s was being investigated in Nigeria for treating high blood pressure.  Other plants discussed included the ubiquitous stinging nettle, Urtica dioica, and elder, Sambucus nigra, both of which were greatly valued in folk medicine.

‘Roy skillfully guided us round the north-east corner of the Park, where almost every species, large or small, seemed to have been used to meet some need (from washing to weather forecasting) in pre-industrial times.’

Edited 5 September 2024.