Delighted to have run another tea blending workshop at Ham Green House recently. This time my lovely guests were three medical students from Bristol University. I always love working with students as I know their lives are so busy and they are never far from feeling stressed and over worked from time to time. The workshop was a nice time to pause for two hours and for us all to natter over making herbal tea.
It was a very creative session. We talked about what they knew of plants as being the origins to many medicines – aspirin the first patented drug from willow bark, vincristine and vinblastine cancer drugs from the tiny periwinkle. The beauty of herbal teas is they are also nutritious, so as well as viewing them through their plant phytochemicals, we can also view them as nutritious drinks. The wide array of colours we can produce – greens, yellows, reds, purples – are virtue of the polyphenol compounds in them. These are valuable nutrients in our diets and there are scientists around the globe researching away and making the case that they should be essential in the diet. In the UK the Nutrition Society hold events and do lots of valuable work.
Ham Green House is so beautiful and found just south of the Avon Gorge leading into Bristol. You can see the incredible gardens just behind me – plenty of herbs there! But I don’t like to go foraging and pick any for these workshops – I just bring my own organic herbs.
There are more workshops in the pipeline back at Ham Green House and also in Dursley. I wonder what crazy teas will be created there!