Can free plant medicine transform our healthcare system? Herbologist Maya Thomas heads into the community with Mobile Apothecary, a roaming project sharing herbs with those in need.

Text by Maya Thomas
Photography by Isabelle Rose Povey

It’s just before 7pm on the last Sunday of July and I’m standing at the corner of Bethnal Green Road in East London. I’m here to observe Mobile Apothecary at work. A cargo bike is being unpacked and transformed into a sturdy table, on top of which sits baskets laden with various herbal salves, ointments and tonics and a giant flask of nourishing nettle tea. A sandwich board placed a few paces away announces, ‘free herbal medicine to support community health’.

Mobile Apothecary’s remedies are practical, carefully considered and aimed at meeting the most immediate needs of the people they are providing for. Namely, but by no means exclusively, those with limited access to accommodation and quality healthcare. There is a soothing antibacterial skin balm for minor injuries, deodorant, hand sanitiser, a salve for achy joints and muscles and an immune system boost tonic.

People start to arrive before setup is complete. The first customer accepts the mineral-rich tea and picks out some muscle and joint balm before heading to the Refugee Community Kitchen, a sister organisation that provides free meals. From here on, there is a steady stream of people arriving to ask for advice and gratefully take what they need.

“How do we celebrate the knowledge that already exists in this community?

Setting up the Mobile Apothecary was an organic process, a response to the growing numbers of unhoused people in the area, Michael Smythe tells me. He is one of a collective of project co-founders, as well as of Phytology, an urban physic garden and nature reserve in Bethnal Green. He says this is a local venture in every sense: the products are made by local volunteers knowledgeable in the art of plant medicine and have been made with plants either grown at Phytology or responsibly foraged in areas such as Victoria Park around the corner or, in the case of some spices, procured from one of the nearby Bangladeshi and Turkish shops. Ingredients such as daisies and comfrey (both important for bruises, aches and skin repair) are such common plants they make the stark point that healthcare could easily be accessible and available to all, if we only had the knowledge.

One man comes over from the refugee kitchen and asks what it’s all about. When he’s told about the plant-based remedies, his eyes light up and he starts talking excitedly about a plant that grows everywhere locally and is commonly used in his home country of Morocco for prostate problems – ‘it makes the men strong!’ But, he says quizzically, no one seems to use it here. After asking for a description of the plant, I tell him it sounds like stinging nettle, and point to the cup of steaming tea he’s just been handed. His eyes widen and he insists that we fill up his flask before he leaves. We’ve found connection (to place and to each other) through a plant that is familiar to us both but culturally and historically has been valued in different ways.

I’ve often tussled with the nature of my work and the ethics surrounding it. As an educator, I spend my time teaching people about the benefits of plants which for millennia have been our primary medicines. Striking the balance between paid workshops and free community programmes is not always straightforward, especially when bills need to be paid. Ideologically speaking, the knowledge I have should be available to everybody: if we all have a better understanding of how the plants around us can aid us, communities as a whole stand to benefit.

Community herbalism is not a new concept. In fact it’s less concept and more a foundation stone of a healthcare system that relies on a wellfunctioning ecosystem managed in sustainable ways. The World Health Organisation states that 80 per cent of the global population relies on traditional plant-based medicines as their primary healthcare. Plant medicine is, quite literally, people’s medicine. And while land ownership and people’s right to land remains an unresolved issue, access to common areas coupled with community gardens can provide an anchor for effective healthcare change.

A coach from the local community football team drops by to say how the joint balm has been a real saviour. One woman has travelled all the way from south-east London, despite the tube line being down that day. She explains her children’s grandfather has rheumatoid arthritis and she’s looking for something that will help. A man comes over, inquisitive and keen to know what is being offered, but declines to take anything; he feels wary of an enterprise offering help so freely. Michael says it’s rare for that to happen, but ‘this is where the continuity of our presence helps’. ‘The main indicator of success is a really solid return of people using the service,’ he says. ‘Between 60 to 70 per cent are regulars and have been using these products for years.’