Anne Stobart - Designing with Medicinal Trees and Shrubs in the Forest Garden

The forest garden offers many opportunities to promote and maintain health. Anne will talk about the wide range of medicinal trees and shrubs that can be included in forest garden design. Alongside foods for health these plants offer a variety of herbal actions which can benefit many ailments and promote resilience. A range of design purposes will be considered from self-help to commercial production. Issues of quality and safety in harvesting and using these plants will also be discussed.

Anne is a consultant medical herbalist and previously managed the degree programme for professional clinical practitioners of herbal medicine at Middlesex University, London. She trained in permaculture design back in the 1990s and after leaving he Middlesex University post in London in 2010, she focused on the Holt Wood Herbs project in Devon, redeveloping a redundant conifer plantation as a woodland source of medicinal plants. Through this project she sought to develop sustainable ways of cultivating and using medicinal trees and shrubs. She is author of The Medicinal Forest Garden Handbook (2020) and Trees and Shrubs That Heal (2023).