What does it mean to practise herbalism deeply, in a time of ecological unraveling?
In this episode of The Herballectual, I sit down with Peter Conway, one of the most respected voices in British herbal medicine. He has practised, taught, and written for over thirty years, helped shape the standing of the profession in the United Kingdom, and now teaches at Pacific Rim College in Victoria. He is the author of Tree Medicine and of The Consultation in Phytotherapy. He has also been called a living mystic.
Peter came to herbalism through ecology, and the two have never separated in him. Drawing on Arne Næss, who distinguished a shallow ecology that stays at the periphery from a deep one that asks what relationship we are actually in with the living world, Peter draws the same line through our own field, and explores what it means to practise a form of herbalism rooted in relationship, responsibility, and the recognition that we owe our existence entirely to plants.
We speak about herbalism as a political and relational act, about reductionism and holism as partners rather than rivals, and about what is lost when a plant is reduced to a single constituent. From the consultation as its own form of medicine to contemplation as the core of practice, this conversation moves through animism, humility, mystery as something to cherish rather than solve, and the eclectic's refusal to be limited by any one tradition. Along the way, Peter shares a luminous account of juniper asserting itself in a consultation, reflects on what it means to belong to the world rather than to own it, and returns, again and again, to the heart of the work: loving people, loving plants, and tending the relationship between them.
