The words home apothecary can make it sound as though you need an entire wall of amber jars, a degree in herbal medicine and a kitchen permanently smelling faintly of something boiling...You really don't.
A home apothecary can begin with three plants you actually know how to use.
That is the bit we have lost somewhere along the way - plant knowledge used to be ordinary knowledge. People knew what grew nearby, what could be dried and kept, what belonged in a tea, a bath, an oil or a simple household preparation, and if they didn't, there was always someone in the village who did.
You don't need to recreate an eighteenth-century herb room to bring some of that knowledge back, we just start small and learn three plants properly.
Grow them if you can, smell them, harvest them then dry them. Make a few simple things with them and work out which ones your household actually reaches for.
For me, there are three very good places to begin and I believe these herbs should be in every houseold in the world: calendula, lemon balm and chamomile.
They are useful, approachable plants with long histories in household herbalism, and between them they introduce you to an enormous amount of what a home apothecary can be.
First, what actually is a home apothecary?
At its simplest, it is a collection of plants and preparations you know well enough to use confidently in ordinary family life.
That might mean dried herbs in labelled jars, infused oils, a salve, a tea you make regularly, a bath blend, honey infused with herbs, or simply a few plants growing outside the back door.
The important part is whether you know what is in those jars and why you keep reaching for it. There is very little point owning forty-seven herbs if every time someone asks what one of them does, you have to Google it. So start with a few, and really learn them.
Calendula: the skin herb
If I were starting a home apothecary from scratch, calendula would be one of the first things I planted.
It is cheerful, forgiving and extraordinarily generous. Once it starts flowering, you can keep picking the open flower heads and it will continue producing more. It's these golden flowers that have been part of household skin preparations for generations.
Calendula has traditionally been used in oils, salves, washes and compresses for dry, weathered, irritated and minor damaged skin. The European Medicines Agency also recognises calendula flower as a traditional herbal medicinal product for minor skin inflammation and as an aid in the healing of minor wounds, based on long-standing use.
For the home apothecary, however, one of the nicest things about calendula is simply how versatile it is.
You can dry the flowers.
You can infuse them into oil.
That oil can stay exactly as it is, or become the base of a balm or salve.
The petals can go into a bath, or in a tea and if you grow it yourself, you get the enormous satisfaction of looking at a jar of golden oil and knowing it began as a seed in your own garden.
What could you make with calendula?
A simple calendula-infused oil is probably the best place to begin.
Once you know how to make an infused oil properly, you have learnt one of the foundation skills of a home apothecary. The same basic method can eventually be used with other suitable herbs too.
Calendula can also become:
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salves and balms
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bath preparations
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cooled herbal washes or compresses
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infused oils for dry hands, feet or weather-exposed skin
It is one of those plants that earns its space.
Lemon balm: the herb I would never be without
Lemon balm is probably the plant most closely woven into the story of Bodhi & Fae.
I first started properly researching Melissa officinalis because of Penny's cold sores, but the more I learnt about it, the more I understood why lemon balm had been kept close to houses and grown in gardens for centuries.
Fresh lemon balm is completely different from the slightly anonymous dried herb you might first meet in a packet.
Rub one of the leaves between your fingers and that bright lemon scent appears instantly.
It has a long history in European herbal traditions, particularly around restlessness, digestion and everyday nervous tension, and it is one of those plants that somehow manages to be both ordinary and fascinating and I LOVE herbs like that. They simply become part of life.
What could you make with lemon balm?
Fresh or dried lemon balm can be used for:
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herbal tea
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infused honey
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bath blends
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simple herbal compresses
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infused oils and salves
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fresh leaf preparations
And occasionally cake, because an apothecary does not need to be relentlessly serious.
Lemon balm is also a lovely herb to grow with children because the scent is so immediate you don't have to convince them that the plant is interesting. Crush a leaf and hand it over.
Job done.
Chamomile: small flower, very useful plant
Chamomile looks almost too delicate to have earned such a long reputation.
Tiny white flowers, yellow centres, nothing especially dramatic and yet humans have been using chamomile for thousands of years.
Historical records describe its use across different cultures for digestive discomfort, skin complaints and a range of household preparations, and modern reviews continue to document just how extensive that traditional use has been.
For me, though, chamomile belongs in a home apothecary because it is wonderfully adaptable.
It can be something you drink.
Something you bathe in.
Something you steep for a compress.
Something you add to a bedtime ritual.
Something you blend with oats when skin feels dry or uncomfortable.
That gives you a lot of usefulness from one very small flower.
What could you make with chamomile?
Chamomile works beautifully in:
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teas and strong infusions
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bath blends
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foot soaks
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cooled compresses
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infused oils
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salves
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dream pillows and other traditional bedtime rituals
It also teaches another useful herbal lesson which is that the same plant can be prepared differently depending on what you want from it.
A cup of chamomile tea and chamomile-infused oil both begin with the same flower, but water and oil extract different parts of a plant.
Once you begin understanding things like that, a home apothecary stops being a collection of recipes and starts becoming knowledge.
Why these three?
I could easily give you a list of twenty herbs worth knowing.
Nettle. Yarrow. Plantain. Lavender. Peppermint. Rose. Elderflower. Thyme. Rosemary.
There is no shortage but beginners do not need twenty. As a brand who is as passionate about our nervous system health as it is our skin barrier, these three herbs has to be where we start, and will help an enormous amount of people daily.
Calendula, lemon balm and chamomile give you three plants with different personalities and different strengths.
Calendula introduces you to skin preparations and infused oils.
Lemon balm introduces you to fresh herbs, teas, honey and the way one plant can become part of everyday family life.
Chamomile introduces you to infusions, baths and the versatility of a flower that can move easily between cup, compress and skincare.
Interestingly, experienced herbal educators also commonly include calendula, chamomile and lemon balm among useful beginner apothecary herbs, precisely because they are versatile and can be prepared in several simple ways and you can learn an awful lot from those three alone.
Don't start by buying everything
This is probably the most important bit.
If you decide tomorrow that you are going to build a home apothecary, please do not immediately order thirty bags of herbs, fourteen tincture bottles and something that looks suspiciously like laboratory equipment (trust me I know it is exciting but try to hold fire!!).
Start with what you will actually use.
A few jars.
Labels.
A muslin cloth or fine strainer.
A decent carrier oil if you want to make infused oils, and three herbs.
You can add things later and I definitely think you should!
A home apothecary ought to grow because you have learnt something and found it useful, not because somebody on Pinterest has an exceptionally attractive shelf, no matter how tempting!
Grow some of it yourself if you can
Buying good dried herbs is absolutely fine, but growing even one of your apothecary plants changes your relationship with it.
Suddenly calendula isn't simply "calendula". You know what the seedlings look like, you know how quickly the flowers appear, you notice which insects visit them, you learn when the flower heads feel ready to gather and how much plant material it actually takes to fill a jar once everything is dried. You understand how that plant makes you feel.
You begin understanding the plant rather than only knowing the ingredient.
Growing brings responsibility too.
You water before there is anything particularly exciting to look at. You wait. You wonder whether the seed is going to appear at all and then eventually it does! There is patience and a little faith involved in growing anything useful, and in a world where nearly everything else is designed to arrive tomorrow, this is a wonderful lesson of hope.
Learn two preparations before you learn twenty
If you want a really manageable place to start, learn how to make:
A good herbal infusion
and
A simple herb-infused oil.
Those two skills take you surprisingly far.
An infusion can become a tea, a bath addition or a cooled compress depending on the herb and how it is being used.
An infused oil can be used directly on suitable skin or become the starting point for a salve or balm.
Once those methods make sense, you have the foundations for quite a lot of home herbal making and, importantly, you begin to understand why something is being made a particular way rather than blindly following recipes.
Your home apothecary should look like your home
This is the bit I love - no two home apothecaries need to be the same.
A house with young children might use lots of oats, calendula and chamomile.
Someone who loves growing food may have thyme, rosemary, mint and sage everywhere.
Another person might become obsessed with making infused oils.
Someone else may mainly want herbal teas.
Your apothecary should reflect the people living there - mine is all of the above and more!
Start with what your household actually reaches for. Learn it, use it, and then add the next plant.
Bringing this knowledge back home
I think this is why I am so drawn to the idea of the home apothecary.
Years ago it was only the super important or the super wealthy that knew about plants and herbal medicine. Now, ordinary people like you and me can have access to this and learn to care for your family naturally. You don't have to be able to identify every medicinal herb growing in Britain. You don't need to make every preparation yourself and you certainly don't need to reject modern medicine to appreciate traditional herbal knowledge.
But you can know three plants...then five, perhaps eventually ten! And you most certainly can teach your children what lemon balm smells like and watch them reach for it to help calm them down after a tricky day.
You can show them that calendula seeds become golden flowers, and that those flowers can become an oil sitting in the cupboard.
You can make chamomile tea when the house finally goes quiet.
That is how knowledge survives, by living and using it everyday so that it becomes part of your family life.
If you want somewhere to begin
This is exactly why I created Grow Your Own Apothecary.
It starts with these same three plants: calendula, lemon balm and chamomile.
You grow them from seed, learn their stories, harvest and dry them, then discover how to turn them into simple preparations for skin, ritual and ordinary family life.
Three seeds, three plants, a handful of useful skills and perhaps the beginning of one of those bits of knowledge that quietly stays in your family for years.
