To help get you started down the path of home medicine making, we’ve put together a list of our favorite books for creating your own natural medicine chest. This article shares our top picks for the best home herbal apothecary books, including essential medicine-making guides and recipe-rich herbal books.
A plethora of resources are available for one interested in the rich traditions related to African American herbalism. Below are a few lists in various media. Included are books, conferences, Facebook groups, herbalists, organizations, and websites. This is of course only a subset of items in this field but will hopefully get you well on your way if you’re just starting to explore this area, and will be helpful to all one way or another.
Are you ready to take your herbal book game to the next level? Here are our recommendations for advanced and clinical-quality herbal texts and references, including Ayurvedic and Chinese herbals.
There is a veritable sea of herbal medicine books to choose from these days. It can be a tempestuous situation trying to select a few that will meet your present needs. Want some insight from our team of professional herbal book worms?
Are you ready to grow your own herbs? We’ve compiled a list of brilliant books that will help you start your herb garden, medicinal farm, or permaculture paradise.
Whether it’s e-books or a bookshelf in your home, having your own herb library is a valuable resource. Turn to trusted book and blog authors, but be wary of random information on the internet. Kathi Keville has selected some of her favorite beginning herbal medicine books to entice your herbal journey.
When I first started learning about herbalism three decades ago, it was slim pickings in the educational arena. I could only find a few herbal books at my local bookstore. Perusing the bulletin board at the health food store for herbal classes or conferences proved fruitless. Finding books, teachers, or like-minded plant people was no small chore. You see, there was no Internet.
We’ve been growing medicinal herbs for decades, and their return to the garden each spring is still one of the season’s great joys. As early as January, cold-hardy herbs like motherwort and lemon balm will start showing off new green leaves—followed shortly by purple-tinged anise hyssop, plush stinging nettles, and fragrant peppermint. Although it will be many more weeks before harvesting commences, their presence is a grand and hopeful sign of warmer days to come.
If you’ve ever felt frustrated trying to choose a reliable field guide to take foraging with you, you’re not alone. There are heaps of books on the subject, and the selection can be dizzying. It’s truly important—you might even say a matter of life and death—to make solid choices in this department. To give you a hand, we cozied up in the Chestnut library and got studious, reviewing all the regional wild food and medicine books we could get our hands on, and checking each one for botanical accuracy and attention to detail. The best are queued up here, and there’s a little something for everyone, from bright-eyed beginners to seasoned foragers and plant enthusiasts.
In the spirit of cold-season stockpiles and cozy reading nooks everywhere, we’ve gathered a list of our most cherished books on wild food and herb foraging. Plenty of fantastic field guides and wild food books didn’t make it into this post. We don’t receive any compensation for promoting the books in our list—they are simply our personal favorites. We’ve included links to purchase directly from the author, when applicable, but you can find almost all of these books online or order them through your local bookstore. Note that some of these books cover medicinal and edible uses, whereas some cover only wild foods.
