A web of healing medicine gardens, learning & connecting spaces and plant remedies in Waltham Forest: herbs for ecosystem & community health

Community Apothecary Waltham Forest is a community herbalism project expressed through the three aspects of gardens, learning and medicines. It is a developing vision, a practical action and an ongoing collaborative work. 

We are a CIC (community interest company) established in 2021 but developing in phases since 2017, currently with a core team of three: Rasheeqa Ahmad, Jonny Joseland & Jayne Kress - medical herbalist and land workers/herb growers. Odhran Lawlor, recently-qualified medical herbalist has also joined us as facilitator in 2025. We have a wider crew of participants taking part in different elements of the project, and a steering group of Kat Ibrahim and Mel Berard, two of our regular volunteers. 

Our aim is making plant medicine accessible in our local lands, from the roots to the remedy, so that people can take part in mutually supportive healthcare - from connecting with our ecosystems, to cultivating healing medicine and learning communally, to exchanging life experiences and stories, to harvesting herbs and making medicines together, to using the medicines for health and wellbeing. We all take part in the processes, to build our knowledge, relationships and skills while practicing safe, connected, embodied herbalism based in traditional wisdom, information exchange and collective reflection and analysis around the systemic nature of, and influences on, health and illness.

Herbal medicine is an ancient human-plant practice that resounds with power and possibility for human and ecosystem health, and in our work we also seek to restore balance where its knowledges from earth-connected cultures here and around the world have been suppressed, discredited and invalidated through processes of domination, imperialism, colonialism and capitalism - by hearing, re-seeding and re-centring, always with critical thinking, marginalised knowledge and traditional healing practices held within our communities. We believe these approaches have potential to regenerate and revitalise our relationships at multiple levels - with each other, with our ecosystems and with our histories. Herbal medicine is also responsive to the gaps in our healthcare systems and can support our collective health more wholly: it has been marginalised itself and its healing is fitting and nuanced when practiced in integrity and love. We want to support each other in solidarity with this activity and with our medicines, making them accessible to under-resourced community members and groups, and responding to our collective needs.

Currently we tend a patchwork of medicine gardens in Waltham Forest, with regular sessions in Leyton, Walthamstow and Chingford, along with a looser web of connected gardens in Walthamstow that we co-develop with other local growers groups, to strengthen our networks of knowledge & resource-sharing and support in our neighbourhoods. We offer fortnightly learning opportunities at the Hornbeam Centre in Walthamstow and sometimes at Organiclea Community Growers in Chingford and are available to offer herbalism & garden-based workshops and courses to other spaces in east London. Our remedies are available through our fortnightly Apothecary day at the Hornbeam. We are actively part of local networks of mutual support in community and land care including Waltham Forest Food Growers Network and Time To Grow.

Find out more about our mission and values here

Feedback to us on your experiences with Community Apothecary - it is helpful to us to keep us informed about our community’s needs and desires so that we can be responsive in our activity.

If you would like to get involved: