Herbal & Wellness Loose Leaf Tea

Nicholas Culpeper was born in London on 18 October 1616 and set up about 1640 as an astrologer and physician. In 1652 he published The English Physitian; from 1653 it carried the name it is still known by, The Complete Herbal. He died in 1654, at thirty-seven, and the book outlived him by centuries.

His method was to give every plant a planet. Valerian he put under the influence of Mercury. Mercury has the dominion of this plant, he writes of dill, and of onions, Mars owns them. Calendula he called an admirable solar shrub, scarce to be paralleled. A reader could look up a herb and find its ruler, its season and the ground it grew on, all in English rather than the Latin the College of Physicians kept its own book in.

The ordering on a wall like this one is plainer, and it is only two deep. A plant stands on its own, or it stands in company. Both halves are old. What changes is who did the choosing: a grower, a physician, a household, a tradition working from somewhere else entirely.

So the single plants are here whole: Chamomile, Organic, Peppermint, Organic, Nettle, Organic, Valerian Root, Organic and Red Raspberry Leaf, Organic. The blends put them back in company. Serenity Now! is linden flowers with chamomile, passionflower and lemon balm; Rest and Digest, Organic sets peppermint beside anise, fennel, chamomile and lemon balm; and the Ayurvedic range, Ayurvedic Vata Balance, Organic among them, is built on a principle Culpeper never met.