There is background to this journey: Pulver and I’ve spent years attempting to determine the most highly effective pilgrimage in the UK to take collectively. There has been discuss of Avebury and Stonehenge, or searching for out the sacred springs of St Helen in East Sussex. But, finally, we settled on Glastonbury and its Apothecary Garden, which sits at the edge of the Vale of Avalon. It is right here that, all through the 12 months, Pulver hosts plant medication days in accordance with the season: so roses in summer time and mistletoe in winter.
I’ve at all times been drawn to natural cures and homeopathic options to illnesses and swear
by Pulver’s various floral tinctures (significantly her violet drops for grief and signature neroli gold oil for power fatigue and stress) – however this retreat is next-level. Gazing out to these transcendent views of the Tor in the distance, Pulver explains the Glastonbury zodiac principle, which proposes that every ingredient of the panorama in the surrounding Vale of Avalon mirrors the constellations in the sky. She says the Apothecary Garden, in the close by village of Butleigh, is the coronary heart of the zodiac, also referred to as the pole star – a good spot to set intentions. Its therapeutic historical past dates again a millennium, when the monks from close by Glastonbury Abbey grew vegetation that they then used to make their medication.
Today, the Apothecary Garden is an oasis of well-planned English nation peace – a combine of restored barns and cabins, crammed with pale wooden, Indian antiques and painted by hand tableware, in addition to two giant working lab areas to use at whim.
With its botanical historical past and luxurious setting, it isn’t solely distinctive but in addition inexplicably enchanted. And that has its attract: its proprietor, Richard Howard, is a visionary apothecarist and perfumer himself, having created and developed merchandise for main holistic beauty manufacturers, together with Cowshed and Fortnum & Mason.
The scent of rosa damascena and rosa gallica (the apothecary’s roses)stops me in my tracks, earlier than we amble by the herb backyard, stocked with lemon verbena, sage, rosemary and chamomile shaded by a chestnut tree. Pulver repeatedly tells me, mysteriously: ‘You don’t want to take “plant medicine” to have a psychedelic journey to solely join with the spirit of a plant.’ She teaches me methods to join with vegetation that ‘use all five senses’, which she says ‘is actually about being “here”, in your body, with how you feel. You just need to get used to exercising your senses like a muscle and giving yourself permission to feel.’ So out of my head and into my coronary heart I’m going; and all of it begins to make sense as, throughout our retreat, I’m drawn to the Holy Thorn.
