Event Notice: Seed SistA; Karen Lawton will be visiting The Haseya Apothecary garden to share her passion for growing and working with medicinal herbs on Sunday 15th March 2020 between 1pm -3pm.
This a donation based event.
Book a space here:
https://www.thehaseya.org/events/growingmedicalherbs
Haseya Apothecary Garden
The Haseya Apothecary Garden is a nature heaven in the middle of a city landscape in Chingford, East London. This healing space was created to teach herbal medicine, nutrition and health. Reconnecting people back to nature with a view to healing the mind, body and soul.
I always loved everything about plants, from growing, eating and their health benefits. My husband and I even grew different vegetables and herbs on a balcony when we used to live in a small flat with the dream of doing it on a larger scale. We couldn’t grow much because you couldn’t fit many boxes and planters in there.
I became fascinated by herbs and their health benefits and that’s when I decided to quit my job and embarked on my journey to become a herbalist. Few years later I started my studies for a degree in Medical Herbal Medicine (which I am still currently doing) at Westminster University.
Shortly after starting my first year at university I wanted to create an apothecary garden. So we rented an unused allotment site in Chingford, East London and our journey began.
The beginning was quite hard because the side was overgrown by brambles six foot high. We spent most of the first year clearing it, well at least some parts of it so we can start our project.
We have been granted funds from 125Fund from Westminster University, which helped us to start. We were able to buy shed, tables, tools.
The garden is to serve a number of community projects as an element to either their education or healing. We had visions of working with schools both primary and secondary, mental health treatment facilities and carers, dementia carers and the youth offending team.
We have now developed a strong volunteering team of 20 people who are dedicated to the project and we would like to put efforts into really developing the Seeds of Haseya. The Seeds of Haseya was developed for children as young as three years of age to come along and grow their very own mini herb/butterfly gardens that they can take home with them.
We have also provided botany and science projects where the children can get close and personal with plants with microscopes. We are hopeful to continue to provide free events or events at a discounted rate and to do this we will be seeking further funding from other avenues. We have recently been awarded £500 from our Local Authority to develop a large pond and magical food forest within the Haseya site.
This will be a project that will see local families coming together to create a mini ecosystem that they can watch grow and learn about how important it is to the environment to have these kinds of ecosystems.
We have also been awarded as an official community allotment site in Waltham Forest.
Our vision is to show people how they can grow their own organic, healthy food and medicine for the local community, giving some of the most disadvantaged residents in East London a healing space for the mind, body and spirit. We provide educational opportunities for both adults and children about growing your own food and medicine.
Since the beginning, our passion for plants and their healing properties has driven our desire to start this project, this garden will serve a diverse collective from local teenagers volunteering to do the gardening, working with the local authority to reach members of the community suffering from mental health or dementia to enjoy the healing space and primary school children workshops and other activities.
About Amanda Jesenska
Amanda is an avid gardener and a student herbalist doing a BSc in Medical Herbalism at Westminster University.
Amanda has dedicated her work to connect people to the magic of plants. She runs an Apothecary Community Garden in her local area of East London with her husband and two young children.
