Herbalism is a craft that is a form of art where one creates healing with medicinal herbs while embracing peace, love, compassion, kindness, and gentleness to all creatures and the environment.
Belle Gibbons
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January 18th, 2012 
The Home Herbalist Course is packed full of knowledge that’s essential for those who want to competently practise herbalism in the home.
Written and taught by Belle Gibbons who has been a qualified practising professional herbalist since 1994, this course provides the perfect opportunity for those interested in learning to be a skilful home herbalist.
Belle has gone to great lengths to write about and teach what she has learned and experienced as a professional herbalist. This is not a basic course that matches herbs with health conditions, it’s a course that teaches you how to recognise illness and treat the person as well as the condition. It teaches case taking and how to make herbal prescriptions using herbal remedies you’ve made or bought for your dispensary. In fact, unlike other courses it also teaches you how to make herbal mixtures rather than just using a single herb to treat an illness.
If you aspire to taking control of your health and your family’s and pet’s then this is the course for you.
We also provide short courses for those who are interested in learning a particular area of herbalism such as Natural Skin Care.
January 18th, 2012 
The Home Herbalist Course teaches all aspects of herbalism for home use. On completion of the course students will have the skills and confidence to successfully treat themselves, their families and pets for common ailments using herbal remedies they’ve learned to make or remedies they’ve purchased.
Packed full of knowledge gained from our tutor’s years of clinical experience, this course teaches the theory and practise of home herbalism in a most enlightening and holistic way.
Course Content
Course Information
January 17th, 2012 (Belle’s Blog)
Gardening, Cooking, Herbs, Nature and more…
January 17th, 2012
Natural Skin Care
Learn how to make your own natural skin care products from creams and lotions to bath oils.
Creating and making your own natural skin care products is one of the most lovely things that can be done with herbs and flowers. So delightful is the perfume that fills the kitchen while creams and lotions are being prepared it almost seems like the garden has come indoors.
By doing this course you will not only enjoy the pleasurable practice of making your own products but you will also know that what you’re applying to your skin is a product that contains the ingredients you have chosen especially for your skin type; ingredients that are natural and free of chemicals.
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Healing Pets
Family pets can be as small as a mouse or as big as a horse or even a camel but whatever their size they can be treated with herbal medicine for many common health problems.
Although this course is mainly focused on cats and dogs the content can be applied to most animals. Many common conditions that ail our pets can be treated in the home with natural remedies.
This course not only teaches students how to make herbal remedies but also how to apply them and other natural remedies to those conditions.
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The Medicinal Herb Garden
Herb gardens can be designed in may ways and with any number of themes including culinary, medicinal, and aromatic. Herbs can even be planted within other gardens to provide colour and perfume, and to act as companion plants to keep pests away or to aid sickly plants. There are many number of reasons to grow herbs.
This course teaches students everything they need to have a beautiful, bountiful and useful herb garden whether it is a kitchen garden or a moon garden.
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Natural First Aid
First Aid is a broad term that is not only used to describe the administration of treatment to small emergencies such as a cut finger or grazed knee but also to other conditions that include indigestion, eczema, coughs, nappy rash and gout.
After completing this course students will be able to use the herbal remedies they’ve made and the natural first aid kit they’ve assembled to treat their family for many common conditions that require first aid.
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May 14th, 2012  Tea or to be more precise, an infusion of hibiscus flowers is not only a delicious and refreshing drink but also contains some medicinal benefits. There are no less than three hundred species of hibiscus growing in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and because it’s so beautiful, rosa-sinensis is probably the most widely cultivated. This member of the species has profuse and brilliantly coloured large blossoms in orange, red and purplish shades. The flowers usually only last a day but more buds appear every morning.
Rosa sinensis is said to be an astringent and the roots contain mucilage which helps to sooth the mucous membranes lining the digestive and respiratory tracts. The seeds act as a stimulant and are said to be effective for cramps and in some parts of Asia women make a decoction from the bark to help restore normal menstruation.
The tea is also a popular diuretic and contains Vitamin C and health giving minerals. In 2008 a USDA study showed hibiscus tea lowers blood pressure – the data supports the idea that drinking the tea as part of a normal diet may play a role in controlling blood pressure although more research is needed.
In Ayurveda medicine the roots of rosa sinensis are believed to cure coughs, and hair loss or graying.
Hibiscus tea is slightly tart and blends well with other teas while adding a warm pinkish colour. To make the tea pour 250ml boiling water over one teaspoon of dried blossoms or 3 teaspoons of chopped fresh blossoms and allow it to infuse for ten minutes.
April 28th, 2012 
Isn’t this caterpillar a beauty? It was nibbling away in one of our olive trees; although these trees are precious to us we just left it and it did very little damage. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is but thought it was very attractive.
March 26th, 2012 
Do you know there are over one hundred species of roses and many of them have medicinal properties? Many gardens include the common red rose which has long been a favourite in European folk medicine.
Dried petals are infused to treat dizziness and headache and when combined with honey (added as a sweetener) the infusion is used as a blood purifier and nerve and heart tonic. A decoction of rose petals helps to treat mouth sores while a decoction made with wine helps to rejuvenate a tired body, ease uterine cramps and as a mouthwash helps to relieve toothache. A cold compress made from the wine decoction and placed on the forehead will relieve headache and a a few drops of the warmed decoction in the ear will help with earache. Rose honey is an ancient remedy for sore throat and an old remedy for headache is cloths soaked in rose vinegar and placed on the forehead. A tincture made from roses is also said to be very helpful for mild depression.
Other roses can be used medicinally but red roses are said to be the best for medicinal uses. Don’t you just love nature? There are so many gardens growing red roses in the world yet so few people know of the plant’s medicinal properties.
March 12th, 2012 
Harvesting herbs on a glorious day is one of the most pleasant activities for a herbalist. Today was one of those days – blue skies with a few scattered clouds, cool breeze and lots of the most delightful birdsong. Above is my last harvest of comfrey leaves until Spring brings forth a burst of new growth packed full of the most remarkable healing properties.
And here is the fruit of my labour, the most wonderful comfrey ointment – organic and full of incredible healing properties and oh so very rewarding.
February 16th, 2012 When planting culinary and medicinal herbs it’s necessary to choose the location wisely. It’s so easy to overlook environmental hazards when you think a particular herb or herbs would look lovely planted along a driveway, fence or near the garage or carport. These locations have the potential to load herbs with environmental toxins such as petrol and diesel fumes from car exhausts that are absorbed by the leaves and in turn released in to infusions and other remedies as well as foods containing these herbs.
Some time ago one of my daughters asked me to look after her potted lemon balm because she was relocating. Without thinking we put the pot near the carport, a perfect location for it (or so we thought) with only the morning sun. Because the pot is very heavy that’s where it stayed being watered and fertilized regularly. Not so long ago I wanted to use lemon balm as an ingredient in an ointment I was making. My plants needed to recover from regular pruning for infusions so I thought I’d use my daughter’s plant. Before I harvested it I realized the pot was right beside the car and the leaves would have absorbed the exhaust fumes. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of this when we put it there.
 Potted Lemon Balm The solution is to move the plant to a new and suitable location, prune it back completely so new growth will be free of toxins and before using it let it grow for quite some time allowing watering and rainfall to flush any remaining toxins out of the plant tissue.
Any herbs that are established along driveways and fences beside roads or anywhere cars travel and where they are near other environmental toxins are best left where they are and used only as a garden plant. It’s much better to obtain new plants and locate them in an area of your land that is as free of toxins as possible.
Also, never collect herbs growing along the roadside or herbs planted in gardens such as those in supermarket carparks. Rosemary is one such herb that is now popularly used for landscaping and, in fact, is growing as a border along the carpark at a shopping complex in a town not too far from me.
February 5th, 2012 We have four Frangipani trees growing along the driveway below the house. From November to May they produce beautiful flowers with the most delightful perfume.
This is our first frangipani flower for the season, such a wonderful example of Mother Nature’s perfection. Frangipani trees are very hardy and drought resistant, in fact they don’t like too much water so they are ideal for many parts of Australia, some varieties even grow in cooler areas. We have very cold winters with frost but this doesn’t seem to damage our trees as they drop their leaves in winter anyway, even in the tropical north. The perfume of these flowers reminds me of my childhood – I grew up in North Queensland on a farm near the beach and summers were filled with the perfume of mango, frangipani, and quisqualis blossoms.
Frangipani trees are very easy to propagate all you need to do is cut off a piece of hardwood about 30 centimetres (one foot) long in winter when there is the least sap and leave it in the sun for a couple of weeks to dry out. If it looks like rain take it indoors then place it back in the sun when it’s dry again. Plant it in potting mix and in a few weeks it will have formed roots.
These unusual looking trees with large green leaves and beautiful flowers suit old and modern homes and are a great addition to water-wise gardens.
January 30th, 2012  Homemade Wholemeal Bread I’ve never had many kitchen appliances but as I’ve gotten older and busier I find some of them are indeed time savers and a great help.
My husband and I much prefer making our own bread but it does take time and effort and we certainly don’t have the time. For years we toyed with the idea of buying a breadmaker but heard on the grape vine that they only made small loaves so we thought there was no point bothering with one. Just after Christmas some bread we had bought at a local bakery tasted a little strange so we decided to check out the breadmakers again and low and behold they now make loaves in three sizes, 750 gram, 1kg, and 1.25kg so we bought one. It was the best thing we ever did as far as having delicious, wholesome, healthy and fresh bread.
It’s so easy to make a loaf, all we do is plonk the ingredients in, press a couple of buttons and in a few hours we have the aroma of fresh baked bread in our kitchen and delicious bread that we know has no unpleasant ingredients.
 Fresh Wholemeal Bread with Cherry Jam, It’s hard to resist fresh warm bread with butter and cherry jam. The breadmaker we bought comes with a recipe book which includes herb and garlic bread, and rye bread. It has a fruit and nut dispenser and also makes cakes and jams. I’ve already made sun-dried tomatoe and olive bread – delicious!
January 23rd, 2012 Collecting seeds from your herb plants is a great way to ensure you have a plentiful and free supply on hand for years to come. Apart from these benefits you will know the quality of your own plants and that they’re bound to be disease free.
 Flat Leaf Parsley Seeds It’s easy to collect the seeds; all you need to do is wait until they’re fully matured and harvest them first thing in the morning before the sun is on them but when the dew has dried. Hold a well-opened packet or envelope under the seeds and using scissors or secateurs, snip the stalk so it falls in. After you have the seeds in the envelope or packet you can remove them from the stalk without losing any. Although some plants can take a while to produce seeds after flowering just as the above flat leaf parsley has, it’s well worth the wait.
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