A mentor with the Plant Medicine School, I often organise workshops and hold consultations to help people with various health challenges. After intensive medical herbal studies for five years, as well as working with plants for more than thirty years, enjoy making a variety of herbal medicine, using only natural ingredients - often herbs growing in her garden or in the wild in Donegal - such as: creams for sensitive skin (and issues such as eczema, psoriasis etc) and for maintaining a healthy skin; face serums to balance the skin; anti-inflammatory salve (to help with conditions such as arthritis, muscle pain, back pain, etc); pillow mist to help you relax and get a better sleep; herbal salt, a tasty way to take herbal medicine; ancient delicious drinks that help maintain a good immune system; herbal teas to relax the mind and many more.
I don’t really remember a time when plants were not an important part of my life.
Love for them and their healing powers must be in my genes.
I grew up with a Romanian grandmother who solved most problems, physical and psychological, with plants such as Mugwort, St. John’s Wort or Yarrow. My mother has always nourished plants, growing all sorts on the balcony of our modest apartment in the small rural town of Viseu, in northern Transylvania.
As a child, my favorite hobby was to pretend I was cooking a meal using leaves, roots, and even different types of dirt. If effect, whatever I could find in my grandmother’s courtyard. Most of the time, I would slip into a dreamlike state when ‘cooking,’ finding the experience both relaxing and invigorating.
For me now, having undergone training as a medical herbalist, matching and marrying herbs feels like cooking. Or more accurately, a combination of cooking and perfume-making - another interest I’ve developed while traveling the length and breadth of southern France visiting different perfumeries and taking courses on the craft in England.
A lover of travel (See some of my photos on Worlditineraries.co), I have been fortunate to visit many countries over the last thirty years and one way I remember them is through the plants I discovered there. I feel a rush of childlike joy when I see new plants I’ve never seen before. It’s like meeting new friends, as well as re-acquainting myself with old, familiar ones.
I experience life mainly through my sense of smell and taste. I nibble my way along hiking trails and, if given the chance in restaurants, I ask the chefs a million questions about what herbs and ingredients they use.
While enjoying the aroma of herbs and learning about their healing properties, I also admire their shape and colour and photograph them whenever possible (See some of my photos on on columbiahillenphotography.com)
Having completed a five-year training at The Plant Medicine School in Ireland, I am now enjoying sharing my knowledge in workshops and events at my wild herb garden on the Wild Atlantic Way in Donegal, northwestern Donegal. As a qualified and insured Clinical Herbalist, I am happy to see you in individual consultations to create a personalised herbal protocol for you.
I am grateful to all - more than one hundred types of plants, used for medicinal purposes since ancient times - who accepted my invitation to make Anamcara Healing Herbs Garden their home.
