Hackney Herbal
A garden and studio in Hackney promoting the well-being benefits of herbs and our connection with nature.
Go here if: you are curious about the potential for herbs and nature to impact your day-to-day life, you are looking for connection with others, or you are looking for strategies to improve your physical and mental wellbeing.
What is it: A social enterprise that promotes the wellbeing potential of herbs — growing them, cultivating them, using them as teas and remedies — founded in Hackney by Natalie Mady. Since its start in 2015, the community-minded business has gone on to collaborate with organizations such as Tate, Stella McCartney, and Kew Gardens.
What you need to know: From its garden space and studio, Hackney Herbal offers hands-on workshops that take a broad view of herbs – from practical skills that include how to grow and dry herbs for self-care purposes, and how to make herbal teas and remedies, to wider subjects like how to urban garden and how to connect with nature. Herbs here serve both as a practical remedy and a framework for thinking about our health and the environment
How to bring this into your life right now: Though Hackney Herbal is fundamentally about being together and working within nature, it has managed to put a selection of their workshops online. You can book classes in growing food on the windowsill, identifying wild herbs, and using essential oils for the mind. Also, they make handcrafted herbal tea blends from their own gardens and other organic growers that are available to buy, with profits funding initiatives that serve the local community.
Why we think it matters: By booking a workshop or an event or purchasing their teas and products, you are also supporting free nature-based programs that apply the therapeutic benefits of herbs to communities who need them such as the 6-week Herbal Craft Course at the Center for Better Health, and mental health orientated classes at Recovery College and the local chapter of the charity Mind.
In their own words: “We connect people, plants and place to:
1. Share knowledge and skills relating to horticulture, food growing, and nature
2. Inspire people on their own journeys with plants
3. Nurture the health and resilience of people and the land in Hackney
We use nature-based activities to allow people to come together, share ideas and collaborate. We provide a preventative intervention to the onset of poor mental health as well as a pathway to recovery for those already suffering. Our key outcomes follow the themes of health, education and community resilience.”
Something to do from wherever you are: Can’t wait to get started, Hackney Herbal offers tons of advice on their website and social media channels about making herbal remedies and growing herbs at home, as well as downloadable seasonal journals full of recipes (like this on making a solar infused oil or this on making a body scrub from coffee grounds), sales of which support their mission of increasing access to green spaces in the borough of Hackney and helping people improve their physical and mental health through herbs.
London Terrariums
When you can’t leave the house, bring tiny worlds indoors with London Terrariums.
Go here if: space and time for gardening is limited but your interest in it isn’t
What is it: London’s first terrarium shop and studio in New Cross Gate is an entry into these magical ecosystems under glass.
What you need to know: London Terrariums was started by Emma Sibley in 2014, just before the houseplant movement really took off and potted plants went from dusty in the corner relics to central pieces in interior design. Ever since, attendees to the terrarium workshops, visitors to the brightly colored store which stocks bespoke creations and gardening tools, and clients from the V&A to The Hoxton Hotel, have become enraptured with these tiny self-sustaining worlds (the plants photosynthesize in the enclosed space, living off the condensation so there’s no need for watering). The practice of terrarium making and design stretches back to the Victorian era, and though particularly popular in the 1960s, it fell out of favor. Until now, when we’re looking for ways to reconnect with nature, to bring more of the outside into our lives, and to nurture something beyond ourselves.
What they offer (online and off): During current closed times, you can purchase a terrarium kit or attend an online workshop for at-home terrarium making. If you love subscriptions, check out their London Terrariums Plant Club for a monthly dose of greenery. LT ‘s bespoke terrariums can also be bought on the site if you are looking for a ready-made one.
Why we think it's special: As our awareness of the benefits of plants – for our mental wellbeing, productivity, and creative inspiration as well as the air quality in our homes – is increasing, making sure that everyone has access to green spaces matters more than ever. And yet the realities of urban lives often translate to no gardens, small spaces in which to live, and little time, distancing us from the natural world even more. Terrariums though striking are low maintenance taking up little space and fitting small apartments and overscheduled lives. As we’re also able to shape them ourselves, we have the added benefit of working with our hands and the pride that comes with making something. Creating terrariums gets our fingers muddy as we figure out designs with moss, orchids, and succulents within glass containers that range from huge carboys to quirky domes. As Emma has said: “ “It’s horticultural therapy. Working with the soil and the plants is meditative and calming.” They become objects of creation and reflection.
In their own words: “Terra- Meaning Earth. Arium- A suffix denoting a place. This is is the basics of what a terrarium is, we are creating a landscape protected from the outside elements, in which the plants and minerals used can interact and grow as if they are in their natural ecosystems.”
Something to inspire: Our relationship with nature doesn’t have to be monumental – like planting millennial forests – but can be realized as tiny worlds set on kitchen counters that make us smile as we pass them. House plants give us tiny ways for nature to take up space in our lives and for us to cultivate something beyond ourselves.
Prick
Beyond the best name for a store dedicated to cacti, Prick is making wider access to the greenery we all need part of its mission.
What is it: London’s first store dedicated entirely to cacti and succulents on Dalston’s Kingsland Road.
Why you’ll love it: With their geometric forms and unusual presentations, the plant life here read as nature’s aesthetic conjurings. Nominated for High Street Shop of 2020, the store feels more like a boutique than a garden center, with white walls, sculptural plinths, shelves of ceramics — “prick pots” – many of which have been commissioned by local artists and books on the subject rounding out the interior landscape. Even the wood here is sourced from the Natural History Museum’s Reading Rooms.
What you need to know: Prick was founded by Gynelle Leon, who at the age of 30 on a quest for a different story of happiness than the one she’d been sold retrained as a florist. Her love of plants had started to edge out an early career in finance and fraud prevention (her degree was in Forensic Science). A 2011 visit to Yves Saint Laurent’s Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh led her to fall for cacti’s diverse forms and set her on a global search to become an expert taking in the epic desert plant-life of the United States. Leon now sources unusual specimens (the shop stocks over 150 types) throughout the UK and Europe, forging relationships with auctions, nurseries, and collectors to curate the store’s collection of cacti and succulents.
In the summer, Prick expanded from just the plant shop to a new space which according to Gynelle “is not a shop but our event space for workshops, talks, panel discussions lectures, book clubs, coffee mornings… I love community and have always dreamt of a space where we can celebrate and enjoy plant culture.” Due to shifting COVID rules, we suggest checking social media for updates on this new stage of Prick.
Why we think it matters: As we spend more time at home – and we can all feel differently about that – those little pops of green around us start to matter. Plants have a direct impact on our wellbeing: seeing them reduces stress, caring for them gets us out of our heads, and even the air we breathe improves. Gynelle has been open about her own experiences of depression, stress, and anxiety and how “being around nature and especially caring for my houseplants provides me with moments of calm and allows me to be in flow.”
And yet, who has access to green spaces and those green pots, indeed who can cultivate them, hasn’t been historically equal. On researching and developing Prick, Gynelle found that she was one of the few people of color in horticulture, a field dominated by middle-class white men. She has since made it part of her mission to bring plants to everyone. That’s part of the appeal of houseplants – they can be for all — there’s no need for outdoor spaces, or vast amounts of experience, or expensive tools. Hardy, needing very little attention, cacti and succulents are the perfect companions for busy city dwellers and everyone who wants to tend to them. As Leon says: “We all should have the right to a connection with nature and the ability to make a career out of it. The representation in gardening media and the large horticultural bodies must change to inspire those of all walks of life and race.”
In their own words: “Prick sees cacti and succulents as living sculptures that take years to fully develop…A succulent plant has the potential to live for many years, sometimes even outliving its owners. Investing in plants is like gaining new flatmates or family members; a break away from our modern disposable culture.”
Gift edit: The shop is now in book form, Prick, but we’re also coveting this one and this one.
Something to do: Participate in Black Pound Day, started by Swiss of So Solid Crew, and now backed by Google, which takes place on the first Saturday of the month to encourage people to support black-owned businesses.