Grow Your Own Drugs – S02E05
BBC2 – 20 April 2010
5/6 – Shrubs and Trees
In the penultimate episode of his ethnobotanical guide to the medicinal property of plants, James Wong uses trees and shrubs to tackle minor everyday complaints. He shows one shaving rash sufferer how to grow witch hazel and turn it into a cooling gel, and offers three sinusitis sufferers some relief with a fragrant eucalyptus rub that takes just moments to make. He meets expert growers and turns St John’s Wort into a skin balm for cuts and wounds, and creates a delicious looking frozen granita from willow bark to help provide pain relief.
The problem with this show is that I want to grow every plant featured and obviously that’s not possible, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to do it.
I’m down with anything made from eucalyptus. Being Australian I’m well aware of the benefits of that tree and the number of uses it can have. Unfortunately my tree did not survive being dug up and transferred to the new place back in 2006 and I’m still kicking myself that after several years of having it in a pot I decided to put it in the ground at all. If I had just left it another year in a pot then I would still have it now but after it being in the ground for a year it just wasn’t happy about being moved. Beautiful tree I still miss you.
This time I will get a really big pot and keep my next eucalyptus in it. I had entertained ideas of planting a load of trees at the bottom of the garden once I had cleared it, but once I had cleared it I found 2 x 5 metres of concrete at the bottom of the garden and therefore no place to plant trees. I quite like the old base, it’s like really crazy paving but it did mean altering my planting plans.
I always relate St John’s Wort to depression so I enjoyed the segment on using it to treat wounds and cuts and yeah I have seen willow bark in the health food shop as an alternative to pain killers.
