On a recent leisurely local stroll, Kyle Patton collected big bunches of nettle leaves and chickweed along the way. The herbalist took the greens home, tossed them in a food processor with some basil and other ingredients and made a pesto that he and his five-year-old son had for dinner that night.
"My son was like, 'Wow, this is the best pesto you’ve ever made!'?" Patton tells the Straight in a phone interview. “And I was like, ‘Wow, you just ate half a pound of nettle leaves!’?"
Those nettles didn’t just make for a tasty sauce. They’re also abundant in vitamins and minerals and are said to stimulate the immune system. Chickweed, too, contains many beneficial nutrients.
Metro Vancouver has an abundance of healing plants growing wild all over the place: in parks, by the beach, by lakes and rivers, and in people’s own backyards. Patton, who heads the Urban Herb School, teaches people how to identify and use edible and medicinal plants.
"Once people learn about the healing herbs all around us, they can have cupboards full of medicines that they can make themselves," says Patton.
Whether people want to learn how to make a pot of healing tea or pursue a career as an herbalist, there’s no denying the growing interest in herbalism in general. Practitioners such as Patton predict the trend will continue.
"A number of people are losing faith in the pharmaceutical industry and the western medical model of health," he says. "They’re looking for something more sustainable; some recognize the environmental impact of the pharmaceutical industry."
Judy Nelson, vice president of herbal studies at Burnaby’s Dominion Herbal College, says the widespread interest in herbalism can be partly attributed to the increasing acceptance of integrative medicine.
"Herbs can enhance well-being or help with whatever health problem someone might have," Nelson says by phone. "But we’re not saying we don’t need drugs. Maybe we don’t need as many. We respect and work with other health-care practitioners."
Founded in 1926, and North America’s oldest school of herbal education, Dominion has a range of programs, from a one-year, distance-learning chartered herbalist class to clinical herbal-therapy courses. Nelson says the college, which is accredited by B.C.’s Private Career Training Institutions Agency, draws everyone from eager high-school graduates to older adults looking for a career change to natural-health practitioners wanting to expand their practice and deepen their understanding of nature’s pharmacy.
Through the Urban Herb School, Patton offers workshops on everything from foraging and gathering plants to making creams, salves, and oils. Then there are more intensive classes on medicinal plants. There is also his See the City GREEN course, which takes participants on a series of walks through places like Stanley Park and Pacific Spirit Park, where they use basic botany to distinguish plants and find ones they can use at home—and which ones they can’t: It’s important to use caution picking wild greens for human consumption.
"I make it really simple for people," says Patton, who studied at Ithaca, New York’s Northeast School of Botanical Medicine and Margaretville, New York’s Blue Deer Center, which focuses on "plant spirit medicine". "Plants don’t have to be so foreign….There are some fantastic diagnosticians who use dry herbs but will walk right by them outside because they have no idea what they look like."
Patton also heads the Living Medicine Project, a nonprofit initiative that promotes self-care and helps people foster a sense of connection with the land.
Respect for nature is an aspect that’s been lost in western medicine, says Evelyn Coggins, a Pemberton-based clinical herbalist who’s studying for her master of health science degree in herbal medicine through Australia’s University of New England.
"We in North America throw away this whole body of knowledge, a classical body of knowledge that other cultures respect and incorporate into their medical models. Look at traditional Chinese medicine," Coggins says by phone. "I take people out on horseback into the wilderness and talk about all the different plants that First Nations made use of to treat disease and maintain good health. People’s faces are absolutely rapt. It’s like knowing a secret language….They have more of a reconnection to the Earth and how we as a species fit in."
Coggins, who has a diploma in clinical herbal therapy from Dominion Herbal College, is particularly interested in how herbalism can be integrated with conventional medicine and in applying evidence-based principles to medicinal plants. "Science tests very specific things; it’s hard to apply that to a plant that has 30 different constituents," she notes. "Herbs are extremely complex. To move forward, we have to learn how to study that."
Robert McCandless, a master herbalist with 30 years’ experience, says he sees at least 50 people a day at Gaia Garden Herbals, where he works.
"We can give them practical tools," says McCandless, who has studied at the School of Natural Healing in Springville, Utah, and Dominion Herbal College. "There’s much more public awareness of herbs and of the benefits of safer choices, of medicines that are safer than pharmaceuticals."
McCandless, who says herbs work more gently on the body than prescription medications, became interested in the field himself after attending a seminar by John Christopher, who is considered the American pioneer of herbal medicine. Christopher told stories about the healing power of herbs that sounded like miracles. They’re the kinds of stories McCandless says he hears from his customers every day. "If you have the right herb for the right situation, amazing things can happen."
