The Medicinal Garden

Enchantment lurks at every corner of this delightful new Aussie herbal book!

Reading the Medicinal Garden is much like hanging with Caroline herself - creative, joyful, with earthy hands and a happy heart and I couldn’t wait to dive into all the herbs and recipes offered up on these pages!

Caroline’s book teaches you how to create your own medicinal garden – and then shows you exactly what you can do with this garden bounty! It’s such a great combination, because often you’ll get a recipe book or a garden guide, both of which answer only part of the equation. The Medicinal Garden solves this problem as it covers both!

I'm sure you’ll appreciate Caroline’s earth-centric approach to herbalism, writing “the healing properties of herbs aren’t just in their medicinal compounds. It’s in the sowing and growing – your hands in the dirt and the sun on your back while tending to plants and the earth….. it’s all deeply nurturing for the body and mind”.

The book is broken up into various sections. The first introduces you to 48 herbs, with an intro to their medicinal uses, gardening info and a recipe.

The recipes showcase the sheer diversity and capacity of our beloved plant friends, including recipes for:

• scrumptious-sounding food, like the plantain seed crackers Caroline brought to the Estuary Learning Earth Medicine Conference in March 2024, and chamomile, thyme and honey panna cotta

• personal care, ie. luffa massage brush and sage deodorant

• herbal first aid (comfrey poultice and mullein and garlic ear oil)

• home remedies (onion poultice and ginger lemongrass lozenges)

She’s got a section on gardening with practical instructions that makes growing herbs accessible to even the brownest of thumbs and there’s tips on container gardening, caring for your plants and how to dry and harvest.

For me, this book highlights one of life’s eternal truths - life’s better with herbs. Caroline’s a generous guide showing us how to bring our green friends into our everyday lives, whether that’s spending time with them in the garden or using them in an abundance of recipes.

The Medicinal Garden’s practical, inspiring and detailed info will inspire all of us to be more involved in both our gardens and our kitchens.

I can already hear our plant friends cheering at the thought.