The potency of any herbal preparation depends on the plant having been grown in it’s own ideal environment so we have included a lot of information about soil types and what plants thrive in these conditions. The growing acceptance that the wide use of herbicides are damaging other life forms within our biosphere lead us to include a section on companion planting to discourage unwelcome visitors and to maximize plant yields without man made chemical intervention! We like to adopt a permacultural approach to herbs and will try to convey as many uses of plants as possible. Lavender for example is a beautiful, fragrant herb which not only is useful in the kitchen but is very useful medically but is also has natural insecticidal properties discouraging aphids when growing and even dried in bunches can discourage flies.
Increasingly bio-dynamic planting is being accepted as a good working practice by commercial growers and is no longer just a “weirdy beardy” way of growing herbs and vegetables so we have included in our section planting tables which will enable you to plant your planting again to maximize on potency and yield.
Herbs should be a part of every one’s lives and whether you are growing for the table or for the medicine cabinet we hope that we can help to make you appreciate their diversity, beauty and usefulness. We know that not everyone lives in a cottage with a garden so we have included sections on indoor gardening and urban planter gardening so that there is no excuse not to be growing your own.
Botaniceye aims to be a one stop information site for all matters herbal but we are only a small UK based team so please bookmark and come back to see how we are developing as we aim to add new content at a rapid pace. Well that’s the plan!
We know that there are many sites that cover herbs and remedies, herb gardening or are mostly about various news worthy aspects of a research project but what we are having to create is more a compendium of all matters pertaining to herbs in one place so that if a user, your good self that is, wishes to find out anything about any subject or aspect of herbs they will find the correct answer here without having to trail through many sites and versions of the truth before they get to the information that they require.
Our aim is to present the information in a user friendly format so that is of use to the novice or more expert. I personally am a bit of a chemistry nerd and love all the molecular drawings of active components and find research papers facinating which wouldn’t be for you if you wanted to know about companion palnting to help defeat carrot fly, onions or garlic for that by the by! So aware of various different levels of interest that is how the information is arranged so that one can find out more on any herb by digging deeper if one wishes.
We are currently Ireland-based and will therefore start with the flora of the British Isles and Ireland before going european and then the world and eventually we will have covered the 100,000 medical and culinary herbs that have been made available to us by this planet, Earth, that we call home.
Our contributor’s includes a herbalist, of the American/european tradition and a permaculturalist.We have an holistic outlook in what we are aiming for on this site. If you have an article that you would like us to publish or a campaign that you would like us to promote please contact us and we’ll take it from there. We are very mindful of evironmental issues and will also publish issues regarding any agricultural stories that may effect herbs although that may not have been that author’s specific aim, such as the article about the slow response in Government bodies to react to the scientific evidence that herbicides are killing the bees and thereby affecting our harvest which in a time of global warming and the affect that is having on the weather on the growing seasons is madness.
Our Glossary contains information about botanical and medical perspectives but the medical one is that of a herbalist who will have a different perspective as many orthodox Doctors so the definitions may be different than any you have heard before sometimes looking from a different perspective will give you a better understanding of any issue so please give it a read!
