Updated 2-23-08

 

Community Garden Database Project, And community Practitioner Training Program To Launch In The Spring

At the San Francisco Botanical Medicine Clinic we believe that empowering the community to care for their own needs is as important as offering health care in a clinical context. With that in mind, we have begun to initiate a series of projects intended to facilitate health care independence. the first stage is the community garden database. This will be an online searchable database of medicinal plant gardens in the Bay Area. The goal is to encourage people to share medicinal plant resources with one another. Considering that in an urban environment most individuals have little space with which to grow plants, we see it as imperative that people share resources. If for instance a person has a broken leg and they need comfrey to use as a poultice, they can search the database to see who has that plant in their garden. if the person who tends said garden is willing to give up some of their comfrey leaves, arrangements can be made to get the medicine to the person in need. All plants exchanged through this program would be freely given with no monetary exchange.

Having herbs available would not be much good if people do not know how to use them. In order to facilitate a higher level of knowledge about the use of medicinal plants in our communities, we plan to offer a community practitioner training program. the goal of this educational process is to offer training in a wide range of skills pertaining to the use of herbal medicine so that individuals who complete the training will have the ability to offer solid advice to others pertaining to the use of herbs for minor to moderate health care issues. The idea is that we want to encourage effective use of medicinal plants that are locally grown, yet most people have little knowledge of their effective use. Clinical herbalists are few and far between. we need more people who are able to help people get through health issues such as colds, flu, headaches, insomnia, and a variety of other common ailments. We believe that those who desire it can take care of the majority of common health issues using plants that are grown within our communities. The community practitioners are meant to be advisers in that process, teaching individuals to care for themselves. The clinical herbalists are the next line of support for when health situations go beyond what the community practitioners can reasonably advise on. More details about this program will be posted soon.

We are currently constructing the database and expect to launch the program some time this spring. if you are interested in having your garden listed on the database, please email us and we will contact you when the program launches.