Chestnut Herbal School

dandelion

Harvesting chickweed with the haircut method.

The Medicine That Grows In-Between: Lamb’s Quarters, Plantain, and Red Clover

Your garden wants to feed you—not just with the cultivated plants you tuck into the soil, but with a profusion of wild greens and herbs that spring up of their own generous accord. These feral guests surpass domestic veggies in nutrition and are often brimming with medicine, which makes them worthy of our attention and care in cultivated spaces.

A basket of foraged stinging nettles.

The Best Wild Foods and Medicinals for Beginning Foragers and Wildcrafters

When I first began foraging my own food and medicine, I focused on a particular array of plentiful, generous, and nourishing plants—the wild weeds, the common flora, and the invasives. These plants are some of our most superb medicinal allies and nutrient-dense wild foods. And these feral botanicals continue to be my main squeezes: non-native, “weedy” medicinals and wild foods are the most sustainable options out there.

A person harvests wild garlic mustard.

Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs: Sustainable and Safe Gathering Practices

We herbalists have a unique take on the commonest of herbs: instead of dismissing them as mundane or maddening, we choose to embrace wily botanicals with enchantment and enterprise. These medicinal and edible weeds—vulgar villains to most—are the herbalists’ beloveds. This alchemical perspective, transforming the unplanned and uninvited into a veritable treasure, is a handy approach in life that needn’t be limited to weeds.