Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:11] Nicole Wines: Welcome. My name is Nicole Wines with Raíces Cultural Center, and I’m here with Gert Coleman who we have invited to share her story as part of our Ancestral Herbal Narratives Oral History collection. So, Gert, I would actually like you to introduce yourself in your own words. You know, your name, where you’re from and just give a brief introduction of yourself, please.

[00:33] Gert Coleman: Sure. My name is Gert. I come, I was born on Long Island in New York, and I lived in Staten Island for many years. And now I have lived, I live upstate New York in central New York on, 106 acres where we grow lots of at-risk plants and flowers and herbs and so on.

[00:55] Nicole: Great. So, we invited you to be a part of this series back in 2020, and we’ve been trying to kind of get ourselves together. So I’m really, really happy to be able to talk with you more about your work in herbs and herbalism. You’ve become highly recommended by our board president Angela Lugo, who was also part of this series. So can you tell me about what connection you have to herbs and herbalism?

[1:26] Gert: I, oh, very deep. I would say very deep connections and all my life, when I think about it, I have always been attracted to plants. I was an out, I’m still an outdoors kind of girl, but I was always playing outside and plants, observing plants, touching plants, smelling plants, getting to know what they looked like and what they did. My father was a nurse, and if he could heal us with plants and natural things before going to the big guns, he would, so I grew up with, if we had a cough, he would put a mustard plaster, you know, on our chest, and it was very warming and, and wonderful and very personal. And he would use it to break up coughs, and he would give us herbal teas and herbal salves if we had little cuts and scrapes and so on. And we grew up with a very, a big knowledge of plants, as part of our lives. My mother grew flowers and we loved them as well. That’s where it started, you know? And the connection just grew and grew and grew over the years, which you can ask me about.

[2:38] Nicole: So it started with your family?

[2:40] Gert: Yes.

[2:41] Nicole: And it’s very interesting to me because a lot of people who have participated in this series, within their interviews, they’ve, they, they always talk about medicine in the medical field, not always, but most, a lot of the interviews. And they, they make sure to distinguish or, or, or mention the fact that it’s not, that they don’t believe in medicine or that they’re putting it down. So it was just interesting that you mentioned that your father’s a nurse. We’ve had nurses interviewed in this series who also use, use herbs. So for us, what I think we’ve come to understand is that there’s actually a connection there, and that people who work within the medical field know, do often know a little bit about plants and sometimes even are using them over pharmaceutical type medicine. So I wanted to know if you could just like, talk about that a little bit. Did your dad ever talk about that with you?

[3:31] Gert: What I, what I think people forget is that almost all of the, the remedies, the pharmaceuticals were originally plant-based. About 89% of them were plant-based. You know, digitalis for heart came from foxglove and willow bark for aspirin, you know, and all of those kinds of things. And it became cheaper eventually during the the industrial revolution to you know, to manufacture things. Is that dog coming through? The dog in the bathroom?

[4:04] Nicole: It did slightly, but I didn’t hear.

[4:06] Gert: Okay, good. So, uh, yes, he did, he talked about where plants, you know, that, that plants could give us teas or salves or different kinds of, of, uh, of, of remedies. And, and he also believed in, in vitamins, so, and eating well. And that if we ate well, we were building strong bodies and that we would be stronger in resisting things. You know, different flus and different kinds of bugs, or as people would call them, viruses and so on. So we got, we got that early on. We didn’t grow any herbs really in our yards. That, that’s interesting. When I look back there were no herb gardens. That was something I started doing in the eighties. I was home with a, with a baby, and my husband said, you need a hobby. Because it was just us and the dog, and I hadn’t, I didn’t really know too many people with a baby. So eventually I started an herb garden, and at the time that in the eighties there was one book in the library on herbs, and, you know, you had to keep renewing it. They wouldn’t let you, you know, keep it or anything like that. And gradually I learned more and more about herbs as we went along.

[5:31] Nicole: So you talked about your introduction to herbs and herbal healing in kind of like a wider view, what does the word healing mean to you?

[5:41] Gert: You know, it’s funny, the, the word healing really means to me, a process. I, I think it, it’s a very layered word. If we’re, if we’re sick or we need help in some way, I think first we have to admit that we’re sick. We have to sort of observe it and know it. I think it’s a big process. So first you have to sort of realize that maybe you’ve got chronic stomach aches or headaches or, or whatever it is, you know, that something’s bothering you and you need to sort of observe it. And then you need to decide what you’re gonna do about it. Should I, you know, look this up on the internet, should I ask advice? Should I, you know, and a lot of people do. They’ll, they’ll talk to their friends or their family, and eventually maybe seek medical help. And then, then, then there’s a decision about what to do for it. And then compliance, whether we want to take those pills or take that procedure or whatever needed to be done. And, and then there’s the after effect, you know, have we healed or do we jump back and go back to work two days into a flu before we’re ready? You know, I think it’s a very long process healing. And part of it is just honoring it and understanding that we’re sick or that we need help. And it can be emotional, it could be spiritual, it could be physical, physiological. There’s a lot of elements, I think, to healing.

[07:07] Nicole: That’s, that’s true. So, so your father used plants in your, in your home. So you, you had your first exposure really through just your family and growing up and having it right there. Did he talk about the plants and using herbs as medicine or, talk about it as a healing process or more as a support process?

[7:34] Gert: I think it’s both. We had, there were a number of books on folk healing remedies. One of them at the time was a Dr. Jarvis’s book on healing folk remedies. And he kind of took you through all the different kinds of, of supplements, you know, the vitamins and so forth. And if you didn’t have them, and this is something later when we began adding health to, to, to, to gym classes and so forth that we began teaching in the high schools and so on. If you were lacking vitamin D or back, lacking potassium, what were your symptoms? And I remember reading that book cover to cover. And at the time, I think I was in fourth grade or fifth grade, I decided that I needed potassium. You know, I had a lot of those symptoms, and my father very nicely went out and bought grape juice for me. And, and it was just something then we had on hand, you know? So, you know, that was using food, which are also plants, you know, to heal and to keep us in good shape. And just always having fresh fruit and vegetables. My grandparents put up foods, you know, that from their pear tree, they would put make, pears in syrup, and there was always a container of them in the fridge. So at least once a day, you had fresh, you know, or, or ,you know, lovely pears from the pear tree in some form or another. My mother made jams. So we saw the use of plants and, and preserving them and having them, you know, as, as, as an important part of our lives.

[9:11] Nicole:  Did that influenced you in your interest of, pursuing the study of herbs and herbalism?

[9:17] Gert: I think it did, yes. I think it did, because you begin to realize that, you know, in the olden days, nobody wasted anything. You know, if you had oranges, which were once, up here anyway, once a, a, you know, tropical and you only got them seasonally and they were very expensive. You didn’t just eat the orange or drink the juice, you saved the rinds and they made, you know, jams and jellies out of it, or they dried the rinds, and they were used a real high source of, of vitamin C, and they were used as medicines or as flavorings, you know, and they, they could make a, a bitter medicine taste pretty good, you know,or at least something you could get down.

[10:01] Nicole: And do you know where they learned from or who they learned from?

[10:05] Gert: I think it was partly the society in which they lived, that you didn’t waste anything. I, I always say my parents, you know, were they, they, they went through the Depression, but I think it came from before them, from, from, they were Eastern European and they were immigrants to the United States. And I don’t think they ever had a lot of money, and I don’t think they had a lot of money where they came from. So I think it was always sort of a process of using everything that you could, to the best of your ability and, you know, being as healthful and as flavorful as possible. I also read, you know, it, I think the books I chose to read, I read all of the Little House on the Prairie books, which had a similar mentality they used. They grew everything. They used everything, they wasted nothing. And then in the sixties, um, the Back to Earth and Back to Nature movement where people began rediscovering, you know, that the Earth was giving us things and that we didn’t have to go to, to pharmaceuticals all the time. I think those were like, sort of, images and, and influences in my life. But I, as, it’s interesting ’cause I’ve been thinking about these questions since you sent them to me, you know, uncovering new layers of what else influenced me, you know?

[11:27] Nicole: Yeah. What made you decide to pursue it as a path of study? To go as deeply into it as you have that it’s now become such an integral part of your life?

[11:44] Gert: So it started as kind of a hobby, as I mentioned before. And I realized that there was not much out there at that time. Now there’s hundreds of books and websites and webinars and things that are available, but in the eighties, not so much. And so, I eventually found an Herb Society on Staten Island and joined it. And they maintain a 70 by 70 foot colonial herb garden, which I began to learn the plants by touching them and growing them and harvesting them, and just tending them.And because it was a colonial herb garden, I began learning the uses during the colonial times and the importance of plants that these were so important to the people who came to what is now the United States or, or North America. They brought those plants with them because they didn’t know what was going to be here. And the, a lot of those are the weeds and wildflowers, the dandelions and the dock and the arrows and all of those kinds of things. And then they began to notice the plants that were here, and share some of the, the more native background. So, I began studying herbs. I was in the Herb Society. I began giving talks, somebody defaulted on a talk. And because I was president, they asked me. And that set me on my course as a teacher. And to this day, I give talks to anyone who asks me, parks, museums, arboretums, you name it. And I spend a lot of time studying and present, you know, making sure I know what I’m talking about. So I’ve learned a lot. By the nineties, I had decided that I really, really wanted to know more about the herbs, and so I began to look to become an apprentice. And it, I started going to herb conferences and checking out the herbalists, and I found Rosemary Gladstone in Vermont of Sage Mountain, who is considered today the godmother of herbs. And she’s probably the nicest, most wonderful, most knowledgeable, in my opinion, of all the herbalists. And so I, I studied with her and then have continued studying, and now I write articles on the herb of the year, which means I spend nine months of the year studying that herb, drinking it, eating it, growing it, playing with it, researching it, you know? And because I was an English teacher, what I began to look for was, how are herbs represented in poetry, you know, or literature? Peter Rabbit, you know, getting chamomile tea after being frightened by a farmer who wanted to kill him for coming into his garden, you know, that kind of thing. So, that, that’s a big way where I started to go.

[14:44] Nicole: Oh, so you even worked it into your, into your professional life as an English professor. Where were you again? Where were you teaching?

[14:51] Gert: I was teaching at Middlesex County College in Edison, New Jersey. I was an associate professor. I started by teaching the developmental courses and then eventually taught literature and composition, and was, was able to create a course, in nature writing, excuse me.

[15:12] Nicole: Oh, okay.

[15:13] Gert: And I struggled for a number of years because the plants were calling me from my, my profession, which was life, and my, and my occupation and my vocation and so on. And I realized that I had two vocations. And it took me about five years to figure out that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, doing both, and not letting one get in the way of the other. And I think the nature writing was what finally married it together, you know, talking about plants and our connection to the Earth, and tracing other people’s feelings towards Earth and so on.

[15:53] Nicole: And you are doing this right here in our home county of Middlesex.

[15:56] Gert: You bet.

[15:57] Nicole: That’s great. Yeah.

[15:59] Gert: Right near your neighborhood,

[16:00] Nicole: Which is a big way of how we are connected to you. And so glad that we are,

[16:05] Gert: Yes, me too.

[16:07] Nicole: Yeah. Great. So, so you, you answered a few questions that I had without me asking them about, who you learned from, how, how you, I wanna go back to your, childhood and seeing it in your family. Is there any one memory that really stands out to you that you remember a family member? It doesn’t have to be herbs. You mentioned that there were different ways that they used plants. Is there something that really stands out to you in your memories as something that stuck with you through these years, about your family’s connection to plants, your family members’ connection to plants?

[16:45] Gert: I, not necessarily medicinally, I just know that, wherever we lived, my father planted trees and my mother planted flowers, and they surrounded themselves by nature as best they could in suburban Long Island, you know? And they believed fully in, eating well, you know, and the, and the, the power of plants and, making sure we always had several vegetables or fruits, you know, at every meal. And that’s, that, that’s really the most power. I don’t have a particular thing, you know,

[17:26] Nicole: Also, you talked a little bit, well, you mentioned a few things about history. You mentioned about in, when you started to learn about herbs working within a colonial garden and learning about the way that, the herbs were used in a certain way, then making connections to more native, sets of native plants, and how they were used by indigenous people. You mentioned Eastern Europe and your family coming from Eastern Europe. Can you talk a little bit about the ways that you see the connection of culture and heritage to herbs and how they’re used?

[17:58] Gert: I do. I can. I, I see it in, in the spices that we use. My parents didn’t like spicy foods, but if we, they would always put salt, pepper, and paprika on their meats. And that, that’s a very Eastern European tradition, you know, the Polish, Hungarian, German tradition. In those cultures, they would have paprika on the table next to the salt and pepper. They, you know, we colored Easter eggs sometimes with natural things, you know, onion skins to make brown, or the red onions to make red, you know, pink eggs and so forth. So there were those kinds of connections as well.

[18:46] Nicole: It’s interesting, you you say that. I first learned to use onion skins to dye fabric, in Eastern Europe, in Slovakia,

[18:54] Gert: How cool is that. I even I, to this day when I, when I make gravy with meat, I, I will, I, I make a broth and I will sometimes put a bit of onion skin in there, so it’s a nice brown color. You know, sometimes gravy are sort of funny looking. So I try to add as much color and flavor, you know, and, flavor was very, you know, it’s interesting because flavor was very important, you know, to my family. So I think we didn’t use a lot of herbs. One thing I do remember, this answers a previous question. Bay leaf. My mother had bay leaves all over the house. They were in every cabinet. And as a teenager, I remember being absolutely mortified because you’d open a door and a bay leaf would come flying out, you know, or you’d open a drawer and there was a stupid bay leaf. And they repel insects. There’s something in it called lauric acid, and it repels everything, roaches, meal bugs, you name it. And I, at the time, I wished my mother would use Raid like all the other mothers did. But in retrospect, I realized that this was a natural way of just keeping, you know, bugs at bay and so on. And years later, when my daughter moved out and into an apartment, I had written an article on bay, and I mentioned that story. And, she called me up and she said,”So, mom, I read the article, is it true?” And I said, “Well, of course it’s true. What are you talking about?” And she said, “About the bay leaves”, you know, and she, in her very own apartment, had some cockroaches coming in. So, she called the super and they dealt with it, but she put bay leaves in all of her windows after that.

[20:40] Nicole: So you passed it on.

[20:40] Gert: Continues. Yeah.

[20:42] Nicole: Yeah, yeah. You mentioned teaching herbs and herbalism.Do you teach to groups? Do you take on apprentices? How, how, what, what teaching methods do you use in teaching herbalism and herb?

[20:58] Gert: That’s a good question. No, I don’t, I don’t have a school. I, uh, if I started by teaching at museums and, parks on Staten Island, and then sort of graduated to garden clubs and other museums. And then when I began joining, different herbal associations, the International Herb Association, the Herb Society of America, I began teaching to them. I do not do, complicated, talks. Mine, well, they are, but I don’t do PowerPoint or anything like that. I don’t, I really prefer not to use a microphone. I prefer not to have such a big group. I prefer like, an intimate group of maybe 10 to 20 people. And I bring a whole table or two full of, of things, you know, elderberries and, and garlic and echinacea, and all of the herbs I might talk about. And then a few more, just because presentation matters, so that people can see them, if possible. Before COVID, this was much easier. Now we’re, I think, a little more careful about these things, but I usually like to, to hand out herbs so they could touch them and see them and smell them. Maybe have an herbal tea that they could try, make an herbal butter, butter with chives or garlic or something like that so people could see simple, easy ways of adding herbs to their lives. And that flavor is important, as well as the nutritional value. I just gave a talk, it was a lunch and learn the other day, recently. And, I gave out my, I have three bay trees here in the house that, that thrive. And, I cut the, you know, several bay branches and brought them in and gave them dried ones to see what they looked like. That’s what most people are comfortable with, and know the sort of khaki colored leaf. And then, they got to break it and, you know, see what it felt like and smell like. And then I gave them the fresh ones to see how that was, you know, how, and, and there’s this lemon and vanilla notes that people don’t, you know, aren’t aware or there. So that’s more, so it’s as hands-on as I can make it. I also do talks on Zoom, for the park on Staten Island, ’cause I no longer live there. But, I still participate. And it’s interesting because I would sometimes have eight to 10 there. And now that I’m doing Zoom from a further away location, I now get 20 to 30 people showing up on Zoom. Which is interesting. And I think that’s a post COVID development.

[23:40] Nicole: So do you consider yourself an herbalist, an herb, or a teacher of herbalism? How do you, what, how do you introduce yourself when someone asks? In terms of…

[23:51] Gert: I use either herbalist or herbal educator, because I kind of, I’m not, in a healing practice there. And herbalism, covers, you know, there are the growers, there are the medicine makers. There are people who just learn medicine so they could treat their friends and family, but then there are people who have clinics, you know, and are a, a viable alternative to, you know, pharmaceuticals and so on. So herbalist kind of covers all of that. Herbal educators is more what I do, you know, and through writing or, teaching, I try to educate people, without hitting them over the heads with it. But, to, to just be more aware of it and see what ways they can in, include it in their lives. You know, whether it’s something small, like just adding paprika to your meat or, you know, making an herb butter, or, you know, adding echinacea to your vinegar. And for your salad dressing, which, which, you know, boosts your immune system. You know, there are different levels, and I try to meet everybody where they are.

[25:02] Nicole: Great. Thank you for explaining a little more. Can you talk about how you see the connection between herbs and plants and spirit and energy?

[25:15] Gert: Yeah. I think herbs, you know, before we had science, we understood things through religion, you know, or magic or whatever it was. And herbs are really wonderful little powerhouses, full of chemical constituencies. The, the scent, the taste, the flavor, the color, where they live, how they grow. Are they dry? Are they wet? You know, what are the conditions they grow in? Those, those are the, the powerful parts of it, that’s the spirit or energies of the plant that we eventually employ for healing. And in herb school, they do teach us to sit with plants, commune with plants, to talk to plants, and, which is really hard to listen to the plants because if you listen, they do speak to you. Sometimes it’s in your head and you can actually hear them. Sometimes it’s just by how they act. Sometimes they tell you, I don’t wanna grow here, I wanna grow over there. Sometimes they show up in dreams. That was more, I think, typical in a, in, in a time when people were closer to nature. They might dream about herbs. Not so much now, but you never know, you know. So, when I was in herb school and communed with a plant called comfrey, it was very readily talkative. And I, I was unbelievably charmed by it. But when I went home back to a more, you know, a place with noise and traffic and city and obligations and so on, it was much harder to talk to the plants and hear them. But with practice and sitting with them and getting to know them, I, I think I, I have a comfortable sense of them, and I think they appreciate my spirit as much as, I appreciate theirs. Some of my allies would be golden rod and roses and rosemary and things, hawthorne.

[27:25] Nicole: Those are plants that you work with a lot?

[27:27] Gert: Yeah, or I feel comfortable with, or I have them and they’re in my, you know, and when I, each year, there’s an herb of the year, and I write a chapter for a book on herbs, that comes out. And I just finished with yarrow. And I’ve always known yarrow It’s always been around in my life, but I hadn’t realized how much of a deep connection that I have with yarrow. And yarrow is, is a protective herb. It stops bleeding, but it also protects people in the Medievals believed that if the yarrow started to wiggle when, it was around you, it was warning you that there was bad stuff or, you know, a sorcerer or something was there. And I just love those stories. I think they, they reveal to the English teacher in me anyway, you know, things that the plant is trying to tell me if I can, but listen and interpret.

[28:24] Nicole: Thank you for sharing. We have yarrow growing in our herb garden as well.

[28:30] Gert: Oh, good. Yeah, the white one? Which color?

[28:33] Nicole: White.

[28:34] Gert: That’s the most medicinal.

[28:36] Nicole: Yeah, we have it. It’s growing everywhere, as it will do if you let it. So, as a teacher, so you get to share information and your knowledge on herbs with a lot of people. Do, do you see any difference in the interest in learning about herbs, now from when you started, I think you said back in the eighties?

[29:07] Gert: Yeah, that, that’s a really good question, because back in the eighties when I first start, when I first joined the Staten Island Herbs Society and, and was trying to learn about herbs and so on, I, I had friends who, who were sweet about it, but they teased me and they said, “What do you do? You sit around and talk about herbs?” Like, they just couldn’t believe there was a group about, you know, learning about herbs. But 10, 15 years later, you know, in the nineties and in the two thousands, suddenly those same people would, would sidle up to me and say, so, uh, so what do you think about that echinacea? You know, you think I should take it, or do you, what about St. John’s wort? You know, suddenly I was a source of information and it was no longer a big joke, you know? So yeah, I have seen a plethora of interest, which has been lovely. You know, I, I’ve seen people wanting to grow their own basil and parsley, you know, and thyme and so forth for cooking, but also for the smell of it, for the pleasure of it, and a huge interest in, medicinal uses. Sometimes I would be hired to talk to a garden club about, you know, about herbs, usually culinary, and then all the questions afterwards would be medicinal, always, you know, I would want, I prep for culinary, but you’re asking me about medicinal. So I, I see it continuing to steamroll. And I see I’m, I’m sort of optimistic, rather cautiously optimistic that, that the pharmaceutical world and the herbal world will, will be more integrated, as we go forward into the future. Doctors are less, dismissive of using chamomile to help you get to sleep and so forth. I, I think that I’m optimistic. That’s not to say that, that, you know, it couldn’t all be taken away, you know, or you know, that there are forces at work, you know, greed and patriarchal and all sorts of reasons, you know,

[31:25] Nicole: So that, that question really had to do with people’s interest in herbs. And I, I’ve, I’ve heard that from a lot of people that there’s just so much more of an interest now than there was a couple decades ago, that it’s a topic that’s just talked about a lot more openly between people. And so that’s a very positive change. How have you seen, the change in the practice of herbalism over that time? Over that same time?

[31:55] Gert: What I’ve seen is that when I became an herbalist and I got a nice little certification for it, you know, but it’s meaningless. You know, it, I, it, it says I studied herbs and I’m an herbalist. But now, there are schools, that are becoming certified that teach herbal practices, aromatherapy, and you can actually now get degrees in these things, naturopaths and so on. I see. I see it spreading more and more, and I see lots and lots of schools, of herbs in, in, on herbs and herbalism throughout, throughout the country and Canada, and all over the place that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, weren’t, weren’t on the, you know, weren’t on the horizon just yet.

[32:47] Nicole: And then on the other side, you mentioned that there you also see some dark forces, so you’re cautiously optimistic. Can you just delve a little bit more into that and explain what you mean? Where you might see dangers of us losing our connection to these, to, to these really actually ancient practices that have been revived by people’s interests in them.

[33:09] Gert: You know, historically you see in war zones and places where cultures are wiped out, those things are wiped out too. You know, records are gone, people lose their, lose all that, or it goes underground. I think what frightens me the most, people tease me and say, “Oh, you’re a witch, you know about these things.” And, it scares me because of the witch hunts in the, you know, from the thirteen hundreds to the seventeen hundreds, where all you had to do was be accused, you know, of giving someone the evil eye. And it was targeted according to feminist, criticism and, and, research. It was targeted at women. 85% of those who were condemned and put to death were women. And it was the healers today, it would be what we as nurses or counselors or women who were teaching. And the, and science was taking over, the male patriarchy was taking over. The religions were, were, you know, and famines and all sorts of things. The Little Ice Age. There were a lot of ugly forces that were happening. And, and the Catholic church was really on top of that as well. And, there’s a fear of being dissed as a witch because that, that fit in the culture has never really gone away. And I could see that coming back. You know, and all of the dystopia, this is the English teacher speaking all of the dystopian novels and stories and the survival shows on television of the last 20 years or so, kind of frightened me. Yes, they, there are foragers who wanna live off the land and, and be okay in case Armageddon hits, but that’s a real fear, that this could hit. So those are, that’s the part, that dark part I’m talking about, and I hope I was clear about that.

[35:11] Nicole: Oh, yes, very. Yeah. And then, and really, you know, going back to what you said your family history is, is Eastern European, that you have a cultural connection, a heritage connection, legacy connection to that very thing that the idea of that accusations of being a, a witch, even just for being out in nature for just a little bit too long, from what I understand. And that, and that you mentioned patriarchy, where, I’ve been told stories that in, in Eastern Europe, you know, men, they, they hike, they camp. They would pack a backpack and go out into the woods all day, take a sack with them and just be wanderers, and it was okay and come back at night. But if a woman did that and walked off into the, into the forest for just, again, a few minutes, they were accused of being a witch because they were there to gather herbs and practice witchcraft.

[36:02] Gert: Mm-hmm.

[36:03] Nicole: And I, I do think that there’s some remnants of that within that culture and in the way that, that we live our lives out in society today here as well.

[36:13] Gert: And I, and I do see the, you know, there’s a fear of, of the, of the forest. People don’t like the darkness of it. People are always cutting down trees and trying to grow lawns instead and so on. I, I think there are remnants, you know, of those ancient fears that maybe aren’t articulated, but are still sort of churning, you know, within our consciousness.

[36:38] Nicole: So I know one thing that you do to combat that, which is teach.

[36:42] Gert: Yes.

[36:43] Nicole: And to me, from what you said about what you teach, another part of that is, that you work to connect people to the plants in ways that they can work it into their everyday life. So that demonstrates that there’s nothing to fear because it really is just part of life. You also mentioned something else, which is interesting, that back in the eighties people were telling, saying, you know, kind of, they found it, it something to kind talk about as a funny thing. “Oh, do you sit around and talk about herbs?” And now just the idea of like, herbal circles, herbal societies, or we’ve had herbal circles. It’s a, it is a thing now that people want to do, they get together around this topic. But when you reflect back to me, when I reflect back in history, is that what people did? Did they sit around to talk about herbs or was it such common knowledge that it was part of daily life and it was just always there? And always around through this series, we’ve gotten a lot of different perspectives on that depending on what culture people are, are coming from and where they grew up, where their parents grew up. Because in, in many cultures and locations, even today, it still is just part of life. But they’ve told me that now that they find themselves here, that it, it is something where you gather to speak about it, and that’s not a bad thing that works to preserve it. So what other ways do you see that we can work to preserve these traditions and this know, this ancestral knowledge that, you know, sometimes we teeter on the brink of, of losing or we, we lose parts of, or big, big swaths of?

[38:18] Gert: I think, I think having parks and green spaces and, adding gardens wherever we can. Do you have a garden at the center? You guys have a garden?

[38:30] Nicole: We have a forest.

[38:32] Gert: Okay.

[38:33] Nicole: We have a lawn, we have a native plant preserve right next door, which is a huge garden itself.

[38:41] Gert: Oh, good.

[38:42] Nicole: From down from there. We have, acres of parkland and an ecological preserve near there. We are getting honeybees this spring and,

[38:50] Gert: Oh, good.

[38:51] Nicole: Yes. And now that we are officially in our, it have been in our location, for some months now and, hopefully for years into the future we will start installing some, some beds, some wildflower beds, especially. We can’t grow any edible or medicinal plants for us to ingest because the land has some contamination, which is just fill.

[39:14] Gert: Right, right.

[39:15] Nicole: Industrial fill, concrete, things like that. However, it is, it is a, it is a place for that we envision to grow a lot of healing plants. You know, despite the fact that we won’t be ingesting them, we still, we, we know that there are other ways that plants help to heal.

[39:35] Gert: If you wanted to ingest them, you could, grow them in, in planters, you know, or pots and so on. But I would suggest you look into, there are a number of herbs that because they have deep roots, they actually cleanse the soil and they transmogrify some of those chemicals into healing, you know, or re re you know, refurbish them. You know, things like, Japanese knotweed, is one of them, and that’s one of those herbs that came from Japan and, and gone on and, and has taken over. But it’s also useful as a tick bite remedy. So, you know, these are things to consider.

[40:18] Nicole: It’s all over our, our, our site actually. It’s, it’s naturalized itself.

[40:25] Gert: It’s very hard to get rid of.

[40:26] Nicole: Yeah.

[40:27] Gert: I, I have gotten rid of it. And then when you get complacent about it, there it is back again, you know, but frequent mowing and digging it up and so on a little bit at a time and, and you’re in the, you, you’re gonna work it,

[40:42] Nicole: But we’re pretty certain, I’m pretty certain that it’s there because it, right now it needs to be there a lot of, a lot because what you said of what you just said to to…

[40:52] Gert: Mm-Hmm.

[40:52] Nicole: …remedy some of what is going on in both the land and the idea that it is a tick. It’s useful for, for ticks and tick bites, and we are in a region that we have, we do have a lot of ticks and

[41:04] Gert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that’s a consideration too. You probably see that in a lot of cultures. You know, sometimes plants, come into our lives, you know, they show up in our gardens and, and, lemon balm which is Melissa officinalis, I, I always grew. It’s wonderful. It’s calming, it’s beautiful, it’s sweet and lovely. And I always grew it next to my driveway so that when I opened the door, it brushed into it and it just sort of said, you’re home. But the year that it seemed to be at its best was right after, the tragedies of 9/11. And I spent an entire month just, just mourning, you know, Staten Island lost, a huge amount of people in that. And I suddenly realized that Lemon Balm was trying to signal to me to use it, you know, drink me, take me, I can help you through the grief of this. And, and that’s the listening to the plants and noting that they’re there, they’re there sometimes to help us if we, but listen.

[42:10] Nicole: Yeah. That’s, that’s really beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. Okay. So you gave some, some ideas of how we can preserve you by teachings, by growing, making sure that we, we grow plants. Why is it so important to preserve this knowledge in your opinion?

[42:27] Gert: I think also by writing and contributing, you know, blogs and, and, and I think what you’re doing here, creating these narratives for people to observe, I think is really important. Why should we do this? Um, because we need the plants. Because the plants have have beauty and health to give us, they have lessons to teach us. They can coexist with us. And, and it’s not just us. I mean the, the bees and the, and the animals, you know, need those plants as well, you know, elderberry, we eat it, but so do deer and raccoons and birds and so forth, you know? So, it’s, it’s the whole ecological system. When it’s out of balance, it’s usually because we, you know, something is missing, you know? The plants are missing, the animals are missing, the people are sick, you know? And so on.

[43:28] Nicole: Last question. Do you have any one particular plant, that you’ve been working with right now that you feel is a very, very close ally or that has really captured your attention?

[43:42] Gert: You know, I, I, I, I know that question was coming, and I can, I can’t answer just one. I have so many. It’s like asking, which is your favorite dog or your favorite child? Yarrow at the moment, because I’ve been working with it. Chamomile because I’m going to be working with it. Parsley and coriander and cilantro are very important to me. Um, anise hyssop, which is a native plant that grows beautiful purple flowers that the bees love. Echinacea, elder, rosemary, calendula. I would have to sort of just mention all of those as one, you know, they’re my favorites right now. Goldenrod too even though people think it gives you allergies, it’s the wrong thing. That’s ragweed, you know? Those would be my favorites.

[44:30] Nicole: Oh, thank you. Gold, I love goldenrod. It’s, it’s one of my favorite plants to see, when I see…

[44:35] Gert:  Mm-Hmm.

[44:36] Nicole: I love how it blooms throughout a, a full set. Like, there’s so many different varieties that it blooms over a whole season, and we just see it in our region, everywhere.

[44:47] Gert: It’s, I, it, it’s like, it’s giving you all this sunlight and golden this before we go into winter, you know?

[44:53] Nicole: Mm-Hmm.

[44:54] Gert: I, I just love it too.

[44:56] Nicole: Thank you for sharing all of that. And it’s okay for anyone listening out there, it’s okay to have more than one close plant ally to be working with. You don’t have to choose just one at all. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you’d like to share or say before we end this, this call?

[45:16] Gert: No, but I’m just so happy to hear you have gardens and land and, and that you’re, you’re creating a sanctuary and, and quite honestly, sacred space for the plants and and nature to be, to just be, in very crowded metropolitan industrial New Jersey. That’s a wonderful thing.

[45:33] Nicole: Oh, thank you. So thank you for that. And, and I did wanna mention, I, I didn’t misspeak, but at our center, we don’t grow the medicinals, but in our homes, we do have medicinal gardens and we, we use the, the plants ourselves and our, and we also use them in our, in our programming. So…

[45:51] Gert: Mm-Hmm.

[45:51] Nicole: Even though it’s not on the public site, we do, we do continue to grow medicinals, like, and we will, we will always.

[46:00] Gert: Good.

[46:01] Nicole: Yes.

[46:01] Gert: See you continue. You’re continuing the heritage right there.

[46:04] Nicole: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for being an inspiration to us and for keeping connected all of these years. And I hope that we continue, continue to dialogue and that we find ways to work together into the future.

[46:16] Gert: Perfect.