Traditional Healing Herbs are gentle, nature‑centered ways of easing the symptoms of flus, colds,and digestive upsets, of working with chronic maladies, and of giving first aid for minor accidents such as cuts, bruises, and stings. For thousands of years, people have relied on plants for healing. Gathering summer plants for winter remedies is part of the year’s rhythm. There is a magic in the healing herbs of gardens. This magic consists not only of the plants’ reputed medicinal properties, but in the strong sense of connection and interdependence that comes from growing and collecting what you need to stay healthy. There’s a pleasant satisfaction, too, in preparing herbal remedies for your family, your friends, and yourself. When a child catches cold, one can open a bottle and take out a pill or brew a fragrant pot of peppermint‑yarrow‑elderflower tea. Each way of treating the cold has its advantages, but the sweet ceremony of brewing and offering tea may be as much of a remedy as the herbs themselves. Among the joys of summer can be growing and gathering beneficent garden herbs, drying them in big fragrant bunches for winter teas, and preparing a collection of herbal tinctures, syrups, oils, ointments, and cosmetics. In winter, we can use summer’s bounty to keep ourselves healthy.
Sturdy, 30 inch perennial plants with spikes of tall, rounded, red-purple flowers in late summer. Grow in sun or part shade.
Traditional Healing Uses: Betony tea has been used to calm tension, anxiety, and nervous headaches, to lower blood pressure, and to relieve diarrhea, indigestion, rheumatism, neuralgia, and sore throats (as a gargle). Betony tea is an herbal alternative to black tea.
Harvest: Gather and dry leaves and flowering tops just before bloom.
Preparation: Pour 1 cup of boiling water over 1-2 teaspoons of dried herb and steep 10-15 minutes. Take 3 times a day.
Caution: Large amounts of betony may irritate the stomach.
