136 – Herbalism and Community Organising with Grassroots Remedies

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism

Podcast.

Guess where I am?

In a car park.

It's too hot in my herb shed and my dispensing assistants in there, so I didn't have anywhere

to go to record this.

So I'm in the car park and it is boiling

because it's a heat wave here.

But I will imminently be going to work in a coffee shop, which is awesome with air

conditioning.

So, yeah, how's everyone been?

I have a corker of an interview for you today.

So I have an interview with Soraya and Katrina from a crew called Grassroots Remedies.

So they're based in Scotland and they're a workers co op and they have just this like

channel dreamy collection of offerings.

So they have like a super accessible like grassroots community clinic within like an NHS

kind of community building.

They have like tonnes of community gardens.

They were talking about an agroecology farm they're working with now.

And yeah, I just think they're like a seriously inspiring example of not only like

grassroots herbalism, but like a very kind of like organised sustainable herbalism in terms

of like how have they built livelihoods for themselves doing this work work?

Like how do they think about class and the areas they're working in and yeah, how do they

connect to their kind of like local bioregion and their ecology and yeah, I think you're

gonna absolutely love it, so please enjoy that.

I know I promised an interview where I was gonna go like in depth talking about my one to

one herbal practise, but you know what, I haven't made an official decision yet or

haven't drafted an announcement, but I've.

I think I'm going to close my doors basically to new people just for like a month or six

weeks so that I can,

yeah, have a little bit of a break,

maybe have a bit of a trip away with my small human and yeah, just kind of like serve the

people I'm already serving at the moment because I've got, I'm supporting a lot of

people and the way I work is like very kind of in depth and high touch in the sense of like

tweaking recommendations and getting different things out and having something for sleep and

something for digestion and this supplement and blah,

blah, blah.

And it's like,

you know, I have like 12 hours nursery time a week and if I Need other childcare in other

times.

It's like a ******* ball ache to organise, do

you know what I mean?

Like in terms of like grandparents or paying a childminder and then the cost and blah blah,

blah.

So it's like,

yeah, I just want to meet the people's needs who have like trusted me to support them.

So yeah, so I want to meet their needs.

I'm also like onboarding Tech 10 folks with

the Rose programme, which is like a collective programme for people supporting someone in

prison, whether that's like a family member or comrade or a loved one or a partner.

So yeah, that's quite kind of time consuming as well in terms of like one to one support,

posting out medicines, like doing the recommendations and then you know, like the

group calls and things.

So yeah, I'm just trying to, to like put my into practise and be kind to myself because

anyone who's done any parenting or childcare, oh my God, why does no one tell you it's such

hard work?

I'm so broken by the end of the.

My child used to go to sleep at 6 o'.

Clock.

That was a nice time thinking about it.

Now I had like three hours in the evening to

myself,

do work, catch up on emails, like work on the membership, maybe watch some trash.

And now he goes to bed like half eight, nine because he's having a late afternoon nap after

nursery and he's not quite old enough to drop the nap.

So just have to deal with the fact that I don't have the evening time anymore.

So yeah, anyway, so I'm just kind of like, yeah, reorientating myself and different

offerings and the PTSD course is like on the horizon as well and that's like the backbone

of the sold out apothecary and funds like all the things, all the Black Flag stuff like the

Anarchist Free Clinic,

all the herbal care packages like.

So yeah, I just need to make sure that all the

different parts of my work are getting energy when they need it, if that makes sense.

So yeah, so I will record a podcast about how I work when it's the right time because I'd

hate for someone to listen to that,

give it an hour of their life and then be like, like I can't actually work with her.

So anyway, I will release it at a later date and I'm still planning on doing this series

about medicine making.

I had like a fantasy of just batch processing all the episodes I booked the Charminder in.

I was like so excited.

And then I got a text from A local grower

being like, are you up for the, you know, the chamomile and stuff again?

And I was like, yeah, amazing, because these herbs are, like, incredible.

And then, like, I literally had to use all those childcare hours to process, like, seven

kilos of chamomile.

I literally had, like, blisters on my hands.

So,

anyway, I will have enough chamomile for, like, months to come, though.

It's one of the herbs I include in my nervous system, so the blends in the care packages,

and it's, like, something I work with a lot with clients, so.

Yeah, but that's just ******* herbalist life in it.

You just got to get on with it.

Like, the herbs need harvesting when they need

harvesting.

Do you know what I mean?

And it's just ******* brilliant to be able to even do that now.

Like, I was really in the newborn trenches,

struggling with, like, you know, even getting an hour or so to myself a week, let alone,

like, running a business again.

A business.

You know what I mean? I'm in this, like, weird hybrid world of,

like, it's my livelihood, but it's also, like, a big solidarity, apothecary kind of

solidarity project.

So I don't know.

Anyway, I've been rambling, and you know what?

I'm sweating my balls off in this car, so I'm gonna stop talking, and I'm gonna go in the

nice, cool cafe and edit this and publish it.

Thank you so much to the folks from Grassroots Remedies again for their time and energy.

I'm gonna put all the links to all the things in the show notes, and yeah, thanks so much

for listening.

Okay, take care.

Hello.

All right,

so, hello.

Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Would you be able to introduce yourselves, your pronouns, like, any other things you'd

like to kind of include?

And this podcast is all about your project, Grassroots Remedies.

And I know you have, like, an amazing array of offerings, so after you've introduced

yourselves, could you just give, like, a kind of bird's eye view as to what Grassroots

Remedies are up to?

Yeah. So my name's Soraya, and I use, yes, she her pronouns, and I'm Katrina,

and I also use she her pronouns.

Yeah. And in terms of a bit of a kind of, like,

what we're up to or sort of like, what? What kind of like.

Yeah, sort of under underpins what we do,

we often have this.

Yeah, you'll often kind of hear us say kind of folk medicine for all folk.

And I guess what we mean by that is.

Well, a lot of us as co op members have come from different or the same sort of like

community organising, sort of like in the past.

And so for us there's sort of like herbalism and environmental and social kind of justice

at work is kind of like kind of one in the same.

Like we can't really have herbalism without that for us.

So we basically spend a lot of our time sort of trying to reconnect folks to the, you know,

the age old tradition of, of herbalism,

you know, in the sense that I guess in the, in the sort of present day we're in this sort of

like complete flip round in a, you know, in a Scottish context and rest of the UK and

Ireland context.

Like we're in this total flip round of the past which was, you know,

way back when if,

if you were a wealthy person and you were looking for some healthcare, you would be able

to pay to see a physician and everyone else that couldn't afford to do that would be

using,

you know, the plants around them and yeah, sort of using the kind of folk tradition.

And obviously today we have this context where we have a National Health Service, the nhs

which is, you know, sort of kind of free at the point of service sort of thing.

And that kind of sets up then this kind of binary which is that anything that isn't in

the National Health Service is an alternative medicine or therapy and then people have to

pay for that.

And usually it's folks that have a lot of, you know, expendable income.

So it's usually, you know, it's kind of like available to them, to the kind of like middle

classes, let's say.

And so we're the kind of.

Yeah, core of our work, I guess, is trying to,

you know, make, make herbalism kind of more accessible to more folks.

Amazing.

And what does that look like in practise?

Like what are your, your different projects and the different threads of your work?

Well, I think one of the things it really looks like in practise is that we focus

on particular plants and we focus on plants that are like, we've got this kind of phrase

that they're abundant to forage, inexpensive to buy and easy to grow.

And I think that gives us the opportunity to really connect people with the plants that are

around them.

But we kind of include in that the plants that

you can just pick up in your local shop or supermarket.

Like, we're not trying to be exclusive about.

You've got to grow everything, you've got to

forage everything.

It's like get some garlic and ginger on the go

and some chilli and all that kind of stuff.

So we're trying to, yeah, like, make things accessible in whatever that means to people,

but also use those conversations about accessibility to, like, explain to people why

there's a sort of social and environmental background to this and that there's a

political background to this and that the plants that we have access to,

it's.

It's not an accident that we have access to

some plants and not access to others and just sort of bringing that in as well.

And one of the ways that we increase the accessibility of what we offer is that we have

a lot of our offerings which are free or low cost at the point that people access them.

So that way that Soraya was saying about the NHS being.

Being like, there's always this thing of they're free at the point of access.

But we think that's like, that can be a really good model to get people into herbal medicine.

And that includes things like our low cost clinics and free workshop programmes that we

run around the clinics.

And that's for folk in an area of Edinburgh called Westerheels.

And it's very specific to people from that area.

But then we also have kind of free to access things in our volunteer sessions which are

open to kind of a broader amount of folk.

And then obviously we do also have higher cost offerings and we use a sliding scale model for

that and look for other ways to support folk financially to access some of our kind of

larger courses.

And that can be through bursaries and grants and all kinds of different things,

I suppose advantages like my background is working in a little bit of that area, so it

can be helpful if you've got a wee eye for some of these things.

But yeah, overall, just trying to kind of make things financially accessible, but also having

a sort of accessibility of what plants we actually use.

Amazing.

So.

So you're having different courses and different workshops and you've got your

clinics and then you've got community gardens.

Right.

Is there any.

Not that.

That's not like shitloads to do, but is there

anything else that's kind of like part of the grassroots remedies kind of ecosystem?

That's. Yeah, I'd say that's definitely like our sort of, like, main

offerings, low cost clinics, the kind of educational arm and then kind of.

Yeah, bringing folks to.

Yeah, like you say, community gardens or quite a large.

Like part of what we get up to these days is being based on an agroecology farm called The

Lauriston Agroecology Farm in northwest Edinburgh, where we're kind of,

I guess, sort of slowly, like slowly, slowly scaling up the kind of plants that we're

growing that then.

Yeah, closes loops in terms of us being able to grow and process more of our own plants

that then go into our, you know,

workshops or courses with students and our clinics and things like that.

Amazing.

So, yeah, tell me about the clinics.

Like, I've always.

Yeah, I remember meeting Ali, who's another member of your workers Co op, actually,

outside the toilet at the radical herbalism gathering that was on the land where I live,

And I think she just started this clinic, the Westerhales Clinic.

Sorry if I've pronounced that wrong, but I know it sits like alongside or like it's in a

kind of like National Health, like NHS building or something.

But yeah, I just wondered like, can you, yeah.

Share a little bit more about the, the clinics

and.

Yeah. How you've made them so accessible and I guess just out of like sheer curiosity, like

how they are kind of like financially sustained.

Yeah,

yeah, it's nice to think back to like.

Yeah, the,

yeah, the radical herbal gatherings were like, big source of inspiration.

that beautiful place.

But yeah, so,

yeah, we, we opened.

So you pronounced it right.

And yeah, it's essentially, it sits inside this kind of big multi agency building in

Edinburgh.

It's in the southwest of Edinburgh, this

neighbourhood west of Hales,

and the building's called the Westerhales Healthy Living Centre.

And inside that there are like a range of different sort of council services and there's

also the Westerhales GP practise and there's also a couple of charities and one of the

charities is called the Health Agency.

And the Health agency offers like various forms of counselling, various therapies to

local residents and things like cooking groups and gardening groups and like various kind of

support groups.

And it's, it's, it's basically once a week, every Wednesday, we grassroots remedies, like,

hire a room to run our clinic from, from inside the Health agency which sits inside the

Wester Hales Healthy Living Centre.

It's like a big.

The layers of the onion.

So that's, that's kind of a bit of a like, yeah, physically placing it and yeah, we, we,

Essentially what happened was Ali and one of

the other medical herbalists in the clinic, Catherine,

just kind of like got in touch with different sort of health,

kind of community health centres around Edinburgh.

And part by chance, part because they kind of knew us already,

the health agency said yes.

Myself and Rona, another co op member, were

also like community gardeners working in that agency at the time as well.

So there were some quite strong links with the community and some of the workers there.

And so,

yeah, the clinic opens one day a week and we get referrals from some of those other kind of

like,

kind of groups within the health agency and we also get referrals from the gps as well.

And I would say, like,

it's like we have had to be adaptive over time running it so that it could, you know, because

it obviously isn't like the most lucrative business model.

That's not why we're doing it.

And so we, yeah, we've certainly changed things and like, I'm sure they'll probably

change again in the future as we like, as like, yeah, unforeseen things happen or

whatever.

So for example, one thing was like,

when we first opened the clinic,

we had a sliding scale for local residents and we had a different sliding scale for like

local staff and volunteers of the area that, you know, worked there but maybe didn't live

there.

And that was so confusing to people,

understandably.

So, you know, you could imagine that like one

scenario, let's say, of someone like coming to see the gratitude remedies, like herbalist is

like,

you know, they, something's going on for them, they just go and see their doctor and then for

whatever reason, the doctor says, hey, I think maybe the herbalists might be able to like,

really support you in this time.

So like, let's walk down the corridor and you know, make, make an appointment and then maybe

that person is suddenly sitting in a herbal appointment without really,

you know, potentially having no sort of background knowledge of what herbalism is.

And then suddenly they're being asked to pay if they can, and pay on a sliding scale, which

they may, may or may not have ever heard of before.

So we realised we were just basically confusing the hell out of people.

So like now we have just like a flat rate for local residents,

which is like £10 an appointment.

And we have a higher sliding scale rate for

other folks.

And we're kind of like seeing how that goes in reality.

We don't kind of like,

you know, chase folks if they don't pay us.

But we try, we, you know, Try and get that

£10.

So that's.

Yeah, that's definitely been like,

I would just say like a constant work in progress of like what is the least confusing

and the most accessible that we can manage and you know, like balancing all these things.

And then like I would say another big like change with the Wester Hales Clinic is that.

Yeah, like in the, in the early years I would say we would spend like quite a lot of time in

the winter, you know, when the growing season is.

Yeah, when it's less plants growing around as we would spend lots of time like writing,

writing funding applications and the clinic,

because it's this kind of like your medical healthcare just sits in this really grey area

and like not many people want to fund it.

We have like other parts of our work that are

much more easily funded,

like you know, remedy making workshops in community gardens, like that sort of thing.

But the clinic's quite, quite tricky and so although we never really actually ever started

out to do this, we decided that we would basically make a small product range and that

those products would specific specifically be sold to like raise money for the clinic.

So like today we have these like.

Yes and tincture blends and some tea blends

and a cream and few of the things that people can like buy through our website or in a few

shops or like you know, if we.

The times you have more capacity, maybe you're on like local stalls in.

Around the Scottish central belt.

But that was quite a big like change and interestingly a few things happened but like

in some ways it started from, from the GPS in that in probably, let's think now maybe about

2018ish time.

One of the GPS that we were more in like communications with was saying hey, it'd be

really cool if like there was some really like, like a, maybe like a joint balm or like

a cream for this that like people that could just like get them from behind the counter in

the health agency.

Some things that we could like recommend to people that are like quite.

Yeah, just quite useful and like maybe we could make a bunch of them at one time sort of

thing.

And that kind of sparked this idea to begin

with and then through,

through kind of COVID when we couldn't see people in the clinics in person or run you

know, workshops inside and things like that.

We were lucky enough to get some funding to run what we called the Herbal Response

project, which was basically making various like syrups and teas that we thought would

help people either with the kind of some of the symptoms of Having Covid or just like

generally being helpful in like living in that time of COVID and all the stress that like

surrounded it.

We were giving out these,

these blends alongside like free meals in the, in the neighbourhood also in the northeast of

Edinburgh, in another.

In another neighbourhood.

And that sort of.

When that time was over, this kind of all

culminated in us thinking, oh, maybe it is a good idea for us to just make some products

that are widely available and this can, this can like directly sustain the clinic.

So yeah, maybe there's more I could say.

But you know, I guess the point of what I'm

saying is like we definitely had to be adaptable and just like, yeah, try and survive

and try out new things as we've come along.

Amazing. And I think that's why I'm so curious about the clinic because it is so kind

of like long lasting because, you know, like so many projects sort of like start and

finish.

And I mean, I agree that like things change all the time.

Like, you know, with the clinic in Calais, like we couldn't have designed it, if that

makes sense.

You kind of have to get stuck in and then

develop things from there.

But just for folks who aren't like aware, like, you know, like lots of people listen to

this from like the so called us and stuff.

Like, what's the kind of like local area like

where you're serving in terms of like class or like health inequalities?

Yeah. Just to give a like bit of a picture.

Yeah, so that's a really interesting question because I think there's like a number

of class elements in the work that we do.

And certainly like Westerhills itself is a

predominantly working class area.

And it's also there's this thing of people perceiving herbal medicine as maybe being

quite like a middle upper class pursuit.

And then there's also a broader factor that I wonder if folk are listening from maybe

outside of Scotland, outside of the uk,

possibly have a bit of an idea of Edinburgh itself as being this like architecturally

beautiful place and there's all these historic buildings and tourist attractions and that's

like if you've been, you know, someone who's visited Edinburgh,

unless you're visiting people who, you know, people you know, if you're visiting just as

kind of tourists, that's probably the side of the city that you've seen.

But I think like many big cities there's a huge contrast and we've got this sort of like

shiny, photogenic side that is shown to the rest the world.

And Then in Edinburgh, I think, particularly in the outskirts, although I'm.

I'm actually like not.

I'm based in Glasgow, so I feel like my

organic knowledge of Edinburgh isn't quite the same.

But my perception of Edinburgh is that there's the shiny affluent bit in the city centre and

then everyone's been kind of pushed to the outskirts and there's a lot of places where

there's.

That have been like really under, under resourced and the infrastructure is really

been basically actively left to decline.

Last year there was like massive cuts to funding and there's possibility that the

Healthy Living Centre where we were based was going to have to close and things got turned

around with kind of the public getting involved, but there's just not a lot there.

Some of the Healthy Living Centre is an absolutely amazing resource for people,

but yes, there's.

I think the contrast is that in these more

wealthy parts of the city there are lots of options in terms of like safe walkable streets

and green spaces,

a wide array of options for food that are affordable to people.

Whereas in more working class areas the access to safe outdoor space is really limited, the

variety of affordable food is extremely limited.

And you hear things being like kind of bandied about in statistics about the difference

between life expectancy in that one neighbourhood that's literally right next to

another neighbourhood and that potentially people are like living for 10 years less or 10

years more,

very much based on their postcode,

which is like zip code for people in other places.

But basically your neighbourhood can really dictate how your life progresses.

And somewhere like Westerhales, there's a lot of people working to kind of get beyond that

and to work with what is there and support folk who are there and people who live there

working to support their neighbours.

It's really difficult though, because there's not being a lot put into that area.

And there's.

Historically that's a thing in big cities.

I know across the uk, I guess I know the UK contacts better than anywhere, but I feel like

it's probably in quite a lot of places.

And then when we're talking about bringing herbal medicine into somewhere, I think that's

really magnified by the fact that people do think of herbal medicine as being this thing

that you do in a rural or semi rural area and especially something like foraging.

You've got to have a homestead with acres of land and it's not something that you can do in

an urban setting when you've got no money at all.

So I think that's like that Class context is sort of broader but also really specific to

what we're doing in Westerhales.

And again, it's sort of reflected in our approach to trying to really highlight and

support people to get to know plants that are around them and that are abundant and that are

easy to find any way that that is.

But it's.

Yeah,

it's a big deal in Wester Hills.

Thanks so much for sharing that.

And the discipline it takes to not ask like

5,000 questions in certain directions.

But just like one,

I guess, last question about the clinic.

Like, I'm, yeah, I'm very interested in how

like local folks have like found it.

Like you mentioned.

Like, I totally agree that everyone perceives herbalism as like very middle class,

but I'm also, also really interested in this like, relationship to the NHS and the doctors

and like the referrals.

So, yeah, if you could speak to that a little

bit, I'd be, yeah, super curious.

Can I say to that? I would give a one word answer and then expand

upon it.

And I wonder if Saray agrees with me on that.

But my one word answer is Gillian.

My expansion on that would be Gillian works with us and she started off as a patient in

our Wester Hills clinic.

She's a local to Westerhales and has become

more and more involved with us on her journey with herbal medicine.

She's been,

you know, she's involved as a patient and as a volunteer.

She's been involved in a lot of our workshops, come on a lot of our courses and then

developed into actually like she is the person who runs the local workshops in Westerhales.

And it is her and her force of personality that gets people in those workshops and gets

people from those workshops into coming to clinic.

And she's also recently qualified as a herbalist herself through the plant medicine

school.

So she is now a herbalist of our clinic.

So it's like a really amazing sort of almost too good to be true kind of storey.

Like she is a real person, honestly.

We are not making her up.

But yeah, so that is like, that is a big factor is in the like the kind of ongoing

continuity of the clinic is that we have.

You just need to get yourself a Jillian.

That's the answer.

Get yourself a Jillian.

So she's.

Yeah, she's amazing.

We've all worked with her for years and she really takes the workshops forward now.

Really involved in the clinic.

Not to say that we absolutely do get referrals from other agencies and you know, from the NHS

as well, but Also, a lot of that has to do with the relationships that Gillian has with

all of the other agencies that are involved in the Healthy Living Centre.

She's worked in different ways in those patchwork of jobs.

That's probably really familiar to lots of people who are listening and to yourself,

Nicole.

Any of us have been freelance or self

employed,

but Gillian has consistently been part of the Healthy Living Centre and part of Westerkill's

life for a very long time.

And I think that is like, it's not a simple thing to do to find yourself agillian,

but that is the kind of thing that makes this work, is that there is somebody on the ground

people know, who people trust and who is like,

extremely passionate about,

like, talking to people about herbal medicine and sharing information and running workshops.

So, yeah, it's kind of.

It's a slightly impossible thing to replicate

because we can't clone her.

It wouldn't be ethical,

but that would be my encouragement is if folk are interested in doing this kind of work is

you need to find somebody on the ground or if you can, who people know and who has the

capacity.

Because it's a lot to ask a person as well to be that person.

It's.

It's really difficult.

And yeah, she's, she's been absolutely amazing.

So, yeah, that is, that is the answer to how it works.

Yeah. Thanks, Katrina. It's. Yeah, it's so true.

And I think,

yeah, on the kind of like,

other side of that with like the relationship, specifically with like, you know, the GP

practise, for example, I feel like it's, yeah, generally been really positive and yeah, it

kind of,

it's kind of funny to think Back to,

I think when when Ali and Catherine, who I mentioned earlier,

first

opened the clinic, they were like,

they decided they were going to go and like, talk to the GPS and they were like, really,

like, you know, bit like nervous and like, okay, this is it, you know, we're gonna like,

try and like win over the,

you know, the other medical professionals sort of thing.

And yeah, we're a bit like bricking it.

And then went into this meeting and the GP

practise were like super welcoming and were like, basically like, oh, you clearly don't

know how like, forward thinking and like, brilliant we are sort of thing.

So, you know, I think there's a certain amount of that, which is like luck of individuals

being in that GP practise at like a particular time.

And it's definitely like,

you know,

I would say we definitely go through periods of Having less referrals from the gps and more

referrals from gps.

And I think that sometimes reflects, like,

staff change over and maybe like individuals interests and things.

But I guess at the end of the day,

like, so many GP practises, like Westerhales is,

you know, the practise is incredibly, like, under resourced and overstretched.

And so I think they, yeah, they can see the benefit of kind of working together.

And yeah, there's definitely been,

like, occasions when we know, with the sort of patient's consent, obviously, that like,

sort of communications, like notes on the sort of patient's kind of situation and like,

healthcare have been shared between the medical practise and the medical herbalists,

if it's like, you know, of the benefit of the individual sort of thing.

And they're up for that.

So it's.

Yeah, it's kind of really interesting and I

guess another thing to say is this is.

but as time goes on, it's quite interesting to us to see the number of kind of like, NHS

staff coming onto our courses.

Our. Yeah, our sort of, like, herbal medicine foraging courses.

And. Yeah, I feel like your class this year, Katrina in Glasgow, was like,

there were so many medical professionals on it and, you know, it's.

For us, that's just amazing because we have such rich conversations and, you know, they

bring so much to the.

To the classes as well.

So, yeah, it's nice to see so much, like, crossover.

Amazing. Yeah, I think, like,

yeah, I've seen it with.

I actually had one local dp, but he worked

there just for a few months and he would refer people to our community garden all the time

because he was just frustrated seeing how it was, like, near enough.

Always, like, nutrition or, like, lack of movement and stuff, you know, like, other

than,

like, class and stuff.

But he was always frustrated with the tools he

had, if that made sense of, like,

you know, like, he could only give someone this particular medication, but really he

wanted them to, like, you know, change their diet or whatever.

So we had quite a good relationship when I used to do this,

like, community food growing kind of workers co op back in the day.

So, yeah, it's really interesting to hear about that relationship.

I'm going to ask about growing shortly because I know you're both very like, passionate

growers, but just on the topic of kind of like,

funding and how you make things happen and.

Yeah, sounds like Gillian is absolutely, like,

amazing and, like,

rooted in the community there,

like. Yeah, I've I guess like I'm coming out of like a decade of workers co ops and it was

an experience,

like some stuff was absolutely amazing and I'm sure much more amazing than like working for

Tesco's or something.

But like there were also like lots of

challenges and I'm now kind of like solo self employed I guess, but I'm.

I'm just being really nosy about like what it's like as a workers co op for you all, like

in terms of division of labour or like paying yourselves like a living wage.

So yeah, please, yeah, feel free to share like whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

I'm just shamelessly curious and interested.

Yeah, yeah, no, totally.

Yeah, I think it's,

it's, yeah, it's all the things and like a lot of lessons over time.

You know, I think in the sort of like early days of the co op or early years of the co op,

we were sort of all doing everything which was quite nice in terms of like skill sharing and

skilling up, but was just like way too much.

So I would say there's like generally been a

trend as we have grown, you know, over time of like each having a bit more of a,

like, of like specialised roles sort of things.

Even though it still seems like we still have endless meetings and still are probably

slightly over involved in everything,

but it's still, you know, it's kind of going, going that way.

Which,

yeah, is a good, good lesson to learn as.

As is like learning about knowing like what

our skills are and what they aren't and like when,

you know,

when should we skill up and do a thing and when should we just be like, you know what,

let's just get another person to do this.

You know, we.

Yeah. So like an example of that is we have some tech support from the wonderful Yarrow at

Pinkwell Studio who like,

they're up in Fife and they work with kind of like values led businesses and there's

definitely been over the years a lot of like picking up the phone and being like, yarrow

help us.

Which you know, is like probably two minutes of their time and like hours of hours.

So yeah, stuff like that, really important and I think,

yeah, I think as well, like,

I guess, yeah, yeah.

Just that it's all investing in relationships,

take on things.

So like before forming the co op, like we all

knew each other as like friends or.

Yeah.

Maybe that we'd be like organised with each other in the past or we'd worked with each

other in the past.

And so I think there is something about the fact that we all work with each other, but I

think, you know, we all also really, like, love each other as well.

Not to get too soppy.

So, like, when,

you know, **** hits the fan a bit, I feel like we are trying to all take care of each other

in it.

And although it would be much nicer to do even

more of this, like, we do,

you know, try to make time to, like, socialise a little bit as well and, like, invest in our,

like, just independent relationships with each other as well as just talking about,

you know, the fact that the website's broken again, what are we going to do or things like

that.

So, yeah, I feel like that's.

Yeah, that's like, definitely, definitely a

strong thing.

And I think as well,

maybe there's also that thing that is, you know, the longer you exist and the.

And the longer that you have worked with various community groups in, you know,

Edinburgh and Glasgow and you have those, like, personal connections with people that,

you know, over time, people, you're just building up your,

I guess, your reputation of being, like, good to work with or reliable and so then more kind

of, like funding channels almost open with, like, collaborations with different people or

things like that.

But yeah, it's interesting.

I mean,

as I said before, like,

quite a large part of what we do is now based on this Lauriston agroecology farm and there

are a few different,

like, projects here and many of them are co ops.

So we're also kind of a co op surrounded by co ops, which is really cool.

I love it, because I do love co ops.

But it's also interesting to see sometimes

that, like,

point of other small organisations possibly reflecting back on what you are also doing,

but are slightly less aware of it, like giving a lot of voluntary time over, you know,

the time that you're paid for and stuff.

And I think that's also this blurry line,

isn't it, when, like, your work is also, like your passion?

You know, you want to spend your Friday night tincturing all the beautiful herbs that have

just perfectly come into flower before they go over next week or whatever.

But obviously there's like, lines and boundaries that we're like, continuously

learning from all that.

So, yeah, I don't know if that, like, like, really answers your questions, but, yeah, it

was a bit of a roundabout answer to some stuff, maybe.

Yeah, no, that's.

Yeah, that's like super.

Yeah, super.

Kind of like,

I think aligned with what I was doing, especially in, like, one of the workers co

ops.

But I think this thing of having existing

relationships.

I feel like if I'd had that with a few of the

people I worked with, that would have like, prevented a lot of stress.

So, yeah, I love how like, relational everything is.

So, yeah, in terms of.

Yeah, like what really comes across from your work is just this like, beautiful connection

to the land and yeah, this like, concept of like closing the gap and trying to source

plants locally.

So, yeah, could you share a little bit more about this kind of like bioregional type

approach and how your kind of community gardens and like growing spaces and now this

far farm.

Oh my God, how exciting is that? Like, how is that all kind of like feeding

into the work of grassroots remedies?

Okay, well, the farm excitement is real.

You must come and visit.

That's the first thing to say.

It's an absolutely amazing space and I'm for people who don't know Scotland.

Denby is quite far away from the farm here in Glasgow and love to get over as often as I

can,

which is never often enough.

It's so, so beautiful.

But I'm wondering, like, if folk haven't come across the idea of a bioregional approach or

like, what we mean by it, because other people maybe mean other things as well.

But we're focusing on plants that thrive growing in like, our location.

And I think using the term bioregional feels quite good because it doesn't have the sort of

like, other ring, slightly racist element of some horticultural terms.

You get like native and non native and invasive.

It's like we're not.

Yeah. Trying to move away from that and think

about, like, what actually thrives in this environment.

So back to that, like, things are abundant to forage and easy to grow and especially when

they, like, offer an alternative to plants, they're at risk, are endangered.

Because we're also trying to just be on this line of not wanting to say, don't ever use

this plant,

but trying to use plants as sensitively as possible or to look for alternatives.

Whenever there's plants that we feel like, oh, there are some ethical issues around using

that.

So the practical examples of that are for forage plants we have like Rona, who's got

this beautiful pet free garden in Coastal Fife, so has like abundant daisies that she

can harvest and we can make into an infused oil and then use that instead of using arnica,

which is kind of at risk.

And then in our growing sites,

we had Ali started growing some black cohosh in her garden in Edinburgh and we now have it

on Lauriston Farm.

Then we can Harvest the black cohosh roots after the three to five years that you need to

have it, have it in the ground before you harvest it.

And we can harvest it and we can harvest some of it and replant some other beds.

And that means that we're not buying in black cohosh root, which is an amazing remedy,

absolutely wonderful remedy, but it's difficult to buy sustainably.

So we're trying to just find these ways of approaching the plants so that we're not

putting things out as not being an option, but we're looking at what are the sustainable

options and how we can grow things in a way that's as sympathetic to the plants and to the

land.

And also sort of connecting people with the land as part of that, that bioregional

approach as well is that,

you know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with buying in dried herbs and lots of people

do.

And like, I am currently drinking some red

clover tea from red clover that I bought because it was so wet in Scotland last summer.

I didn't manage to forage any.

So, like really not wanting to like dried

herbs shame people.

But at the same time, something about having

that like, connection with the living thing is really important and is something that we like

kind of put into that approach.

It's that like trying to like this idea that plants and people are so different from each

other, whereas we're all part of this bioregion and that folk can connect with

plants as they are living.

And it also doesn't need to be an extractive.

I've got to harvest so much of this plant and

then I'm going to use it and you can actually just sit with the plants.

And that's something that we encourage people to do on our volunteer sessions and in some of

our like in person courses, especially something like plant allies and we look at

like a.

A deep dive into one plant a month.

But just connecting like that connection is really important.

And then also the connection through remedy making.

I wonder if this is like something that maybe Nicole, you recognise from your work.

But if you're trying to make like herbal medicines on any kind of even like quite a

medium or to large scale,

that idea of many hands make like work is like a huge thing, like having people, extra folk

and volunteers and students with us to like lending extra hands, especially when we're

making tinctures from roots, like root tinctures.

All of the digging, all of the scrubbing, you always manage to pick a day when it was

certainly in Scotland when it's slightly too cold to be scrubbing roots outside.

But that's what you've decided that you're doing.

And it's good to have a little group of people who can do that and who can kind of help us

out with that.

So yeah, that's.

We're kind of bringing the medicines of where

we are and bringing people to the medicines that I. That is also a loop for us that we

feel like it's really important to close.

But yeah, definitely having.

Having lots of folk involved with remedy

making is a big key for us, I would say.

Yeah, that's wonderful.

I remember in the.

The beginning of the pandemic.

Pandemic.

My stepdad is nearly 80.

Actually he's 80 now, but he was shielding and so like I just couldn't have anyone come to

help.

So I remember just making like hundreds and

hundreds of things and just that exhaustion of doing it on your own versus with a crew.

So yeah, I really love that you've got all these different kind of like ways that people

can feed in and like ways that people can connect.

And I think you'll know like from all of your work,

we just hit this hurdle all the time of like,

we just don't have that kind of like inherited knowledge about herbalism.

Like, you know, like you grow up, or at least I grew up without,

you know, like access to a garden or you know, like there's this romantic view of you'll

learn all this stuff from your grandmother or whatever.

And it just wasn't real for me.

So I can really see how like herbal education is like really, really important.

And I know that's another big thread of your.

So I'm really sorry about time pressure, but I just wondered.

Yeah, it feels really important to hear about what you're doing because I know you have lots

of local workshops, but you also have some online offerings that listeners might be

interested in participating in.

So yeah, could you just share a little bit more about the sort of like.

Yeah, like the popular education kind of work you're doing?

Oh, absolutely.

And that's such a good point that you made

about people just assume that you learn from your granny.

I also started teaching about foraging.

But I'd done a four year degree in herbal medicine and I'm quite good at bluffing.

So that's how I got away with it.

But I think people do like.

I'm really trying to like say to people early on, maybe not quite so honestly, but will say

like, I Didn't learn about this as a kid.

My parents picked blackberries.

That's about it.

So I think it's really helpful to like have that in people's minds that it's not this.

There is an ancestral knowledge but we didn't all get the benefit of it.

But yeah, our online courses we've got quite a range.

We've basically got, got like things that are suitable for someone who's like a total

beginner,

just want to do something anytime, anywhere online.

So we've got a kitchen herbal medicine course which is like totally beginner friendly all

ages.

It's me in my kitchen, filmed by Soraya with occasional cameos from my adorable Jack

Russell bear.

And yeah, it's just a really introductory course.

It's using stuff that people should have in their kitchens in terms of equipment.

Like there's barely any equipment used in it.

If you've got a few jars and a knife flipping

board and a pair of scissors would probably do, you got a lot of the stuff that you need

for it.

So that's our like sort of very, very, very, very entry level if someone's like I don't

know nothing about this stuff.

And with all our courses we include quite a lot of like additional links if people are

like I would like to nerd out about that particular thing.

We, you know, tend to include like podcasts and articles and other resources that people

can look into because we also don't want to reinvent the wheel and we want to bigger up

people who have other very cool stuff going on.

So that's one and then we also another kind of really beginner friendly one would be plant

allies 13 moons where we look at a plant every lunar cycle and we go into that like a real

deep dive.

So people can do back to that experiential stuff that we've talked about before.

And that's when people can do 100% online.

But we also have in person sessions at the

farm in Lauriston.

So that would be a very cool way to get

involved in the farm if you're ever in Edinburgh.

And then fuch have got an interest in foraging.

We have our wild things course which again also online and in person and we call that a

year of wild food and medicine.

And we go into 40 plants that are really abundant to forage in the, in Scotland and in

the UK and we have had like a number of people from.

I think there was somebody in Oregon actually did the course.

We had a whole complicated thing because we post out mystery herbs and we had to like,

tell her daughter what the mystery herbs were so that she could get them.

So they were still a mystery for her.

It was very adorable and very lovely.

So if you.

Yeah, if you have a possible stooge, we can

send secret information to, that's also an option.

And that we book that from autumn to early spring.

And then most recently, we've been offering a community herbalism course, which is called

Grassroots Herbal Foundations.

And that's really.

It's like a really amazing course.

And what we're doing with that is we're

bringing together,

like, so many diverse elements of herbal medicine,

framed for folk to use in a community context,

but also within a partly political take on community health and on herbal medicine.

So in my mind, I imagine this as being someone's like a home herbalist.

They're like that person in their friendship group or they are the broader.

Or the broader friendship group who's like, always suggesting teas to people, making them

balms,

like making suggestions of like, fermented things that you could make or any or all of

the above.

And you do that for your friends and family.

But you maybe wanted to just go a little bit further into your community, be that like a.

A geographical community or a community of interest,

and just want the confidence and skills to bring together all these amazing strands of

herbal medicine and actually go out there and give people, like, give people information

about herbal medicine.

And for a lot of our students, that's in very much in a community kind of workshops kind of

context.

So we do a lot around setting up projects, working with volunteers,

planning workshops, like evaluating workshops.

And it's amazing, some of our students

actually, whilst they're on the course, they do their workshop planning module and

assignment and then actually take that physical workshop plan and take it out into

the wild and deliver a workshop for a group that they're already involved with.

And that's been really amazing because it means that they can come back and, like,

feedback to ourselves and to their peers and, like, how that's felt both before,

during and after delivering the workshop and how they would develop that.

So it's a really, really amazing thing for students to be able to do.

It also has a lot of really practical elements to it.

We've got a remedy making module, we look at sensory herbalisms.

There's a lot of embodiment practises there to look at how we interact with the plants.

And then we do have quite like, kind of more what you might think of as like the academic

end of things.

So we've got herbal Therapeutics, which looks

at different body systems and the effects of stress and then herbs that people might choose

to use in hopefully like a nuanced way,

I think are one the of our big strands is about people trying to use the nuance of the

different ways that plants are and the plants are in the world and use that to inform how.

What they might give to people or what they might suggest to people.

So, yeah,

it's a huge course.

You tell.

I'm quite excited about it and we've had a lot of amazing students come through.

Like,

sorry I said earlier, we do get a fair number of students who are, or who are working in

healthcare themselves already.

And I think you said, Nicole, about the people wanting to sort of add things to what they

offer that complements it and that is actually really useful for the folk that they work with

and the folk in their community.

So yeah,

that's been like a big, really exciting course for us.

We take bookings for that from May to September each year.

And I do have a little, we have a little function on the course website if folk want to

book a little call about the course just to like find out a bit more, ask some questions,

they can do that, we can do that by zoom.

It doesn't have to be a phone call,

so that's an option for folk as well.

But yeah, very, very excited by, by the

Grassroots Herbal Foundation's course and basically there being more community

herbalists in the world because at the minute it feels like home herbalism and practitioner

herbalism are sort of seen as being the only options.

But there's loads of people out there who are already being community herbalists.

They just maybe aren't calling themselves that or, or that isn't in their mind of what they

are.

And we're really,

really, really interested to make that like more of a thing that people can do.

And yeah, that's another one.

People that do that 100% online or can come to

some in person elements of that as well.

So yeah, that's our, that is our, in a not

very much of a nutshell, courses, options.

No, I love that.

I think it sounds like such an important

offering and like,

you know, like through the threads of this conversation, it, it is like those kind of

like community organising skills that just like constantly come up.

Right.

Like, I don't want to say that herbalism is

the easy stuff, but it's like building relationships and building trust with people

and you know,

like navigating like class dynamics and all the other dynamics in the world and you Know,

how do you fund projects and like, yeah, like this kind of.

I've been thinking of doing a kind of like train the trainers type thing for people that

want to like build their facilitation confidence with teaching and stuff.

But it sounds like your course is already doing that and the fact that people get a bit

of like opportunity to then run a workshop somewhere is like.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I'm so sorry.

About time.

It's just my little one is kind of returned from nursery imminently.

So just to finish, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and energy today and

yeah, I will put, put everything you've mentioned in the show notes, but yeah, where

can people find you or learn more?

Yeah,

yeah, thanks, Nicole.

People can sign up to our newsletter through

our, our website,

which is grassrootsremedies.co.uk to like hear about all the latest stuff that we're up to

and including courses and volunteering and various offerings.

And as Katrina said, you can book a 15 minute course call with her if you're, if you're

interested in studying.

And yeah, if you find yourself in near Edinburgh, then come, come and come along to

like a herb garden volunteering session.

It'd be really, really lovely to meet folks.

And yeah, I guess if you directly want to support our clinic then you could maybe buy

some of our products on our website.

But yeah, just wanted to say thanks so much

for having us on, Nicole, and thanks so much for all the work that Solidarity Apothecary is

like continuing to do.

Big inspiration for us as well.

Oh, bless you.

Pleasure.

Well,

yeah, thanks so much.

I hope you both have a really, a really good

day.

And yeah, just like huge respect for

everything you're doing.

I wish you were like literally not the other

side of the these islands.

I feel like very far away from Scotland.

But yeah, okay, awesome.

And yeah, really lovely to meet you too, Katrina as well.

I still haven't forgiven Soraya for stealing one of my besties up to Scotland.

So we'll, we'll let that go.

But yeah, thanks again for your time.

All right,

cheers.

Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the

Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all

the resources for from the show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.