Our news

At present we are sowing seeds for food medicine knowledge in local communities by running courses and walks and co-creating medicinal gardens. Find out more in our newsletters from 2019, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, October 2009 and January 2009.

NHS public health and GPs

Our courses are designed for safe, evidence-based social prescribing by GPs and other health professionals. We encourage GP surgeries to develop kitchen gardens and then teach patients how to use the foods as medicine.

Licensing our courses to health educators

We license our evidence-based Living Medicine courses to experienced BSc medical herbalists, and as a charity, help them fundraise to run the courses. We help link them into their local communities as an inspiring new source of health educators, so they may work alongside GPs, hospitals, health champions and others to unlock the healing potential of gardens, parks and green spaces.

Our team

Our tutors include:
Gail Farrow BSc - Gail is a founder tutor of Living Medicine. A practising medical herbalist and aromatherapist, she is an educator in Further Education teaching at Morley College in Lambeth and runs community education programmes in Walthamstow and Stratford. She is a member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists (NIMH). Gail is committed to helping people improve the quality of their health though diet and lifestyle simply and inexpensively. Having seen the effect that life experiences can have on health with her own patients and their increased self-understanding, she began training in endobiogenics which acknowledges the importance of the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems in health.

Anna Betz MCPP - Anna is a founder tutor of Living Medicine and a medical herbalist. Evolutionary perspective and systems thinking inform her approach to health and wellbeing. She has a particular interest in the prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases like diabetes and dementia. Anna is trained in mindfulness practices, transparent communication, narrative approaches and systemic family therapy. She also works in the NHS as a lead practitioner in dementia where she started Brainfood, a pilot project to teach patients and their networks about brain-friendly foods and healthy lifestyles. Her passion for building thriving and sustainable communities inspired her to co-found the School of Commoning and the HealthCommonsHub. She feels at home in places where individual, communal, organisational and social evolution meet and where people support each other in becoming whole by learning to embrace continually deepening and broadening perspectives of life.

Our trustees

Alex Laird BSc FCPP Founding Diretor
Simon Mills MA FNIMH FCPP
Carolyn Steel MA DipArch RIBA
Arthur Potts Dawson RSA

Alex Laird BSc FCPP Founding Director of Living Medicine
Alex is a medical herbalist and runs the UK's first herbal clinic in hospital dermatology at Whipps Cross University Hospital, where she is tutor-practitioner to BSc herbal students. She also practises at Breast Cancer Haven and privately. She is a council member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (CPP), and formerly of the Aromatherapy Organisations Council. She has published clinical research and is a visiting lecturer to universities including Westminster, East London, Hertfordshire and the Royal Free Medical School. Originally a TV producer, she then worked as an aromatherapist for staff at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, with drug users and those with HIV while training as a medical herbalist. Her quest is how we create health in individuals and communities at all levels, physical, spiritual and environmental.

Simon Mills MA FNIMH FCPP
Simon is a leader in herbal medicine in the UK and internationally. He is a past President of The National Institute of Medical Herbalists and Chairman of the British Herbal Medicine Association. In Exeter he co-founded the first University centre for complementary health studies in 1987, the first integrated health programme at a UK medical school in 2003, and from 2002 the first Masters Programme in herbal medicine in the USA. Since 1997 he has been Secretary of ESCOP, a European network of experts in herbal medicine and on its behalf led the first major EU-wide scientific project in herbal medicines. From 1993 he created and led the development of EXTRACT, a powerful database tool to help those using herbal medicines in practice: the Herbal Hub will be the platform for this facility. Co-author of the modern classic The Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy, Simon founded SustainCare, a CIC and network to promote sustainable self-care (www.sustaincare.net).

Carolyn Steel MA (Cantab) RIBA
Carolyn is a leading thinker on food and cities. Her 2020 book Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World, has received critical acclaim. It explores her concept of sitopia (food-place), first established in her 2008 book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, an international best-seller that gained her work broad recognition across a range of fields in academia, industry and the arts. A director of Kilburn Nightingale Architects in London, Carolyn studied at Cambridge University and has since been a visiting lecturer at Cambridge, London M etropolitan and Wageningen Universities and at the London School of Economics, where she was the inaugural Studio Director of the Cities Programme. A Rome scholar in 1995-6, Carolyn is in international demand as a speaker and her 2009 TED talk has received more than one million views.

Arthur Potts Dawson RSA
Arthur has been cooking for 21 years. He has worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Pierre Koffman and was Head Chef at the River Cafe before going on to restyle Petersham Nurseries Cafe and relaunch Cecconi's restaurant. He then became executive head chef for Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Restaurant. In 2006 Arthur created two sustainably-aware urban restaurants, Acorn House & Water House in London, where he teaches 10 young trainees a year in sustainable catering. He wrote The Acorn House Cookbook and writes for the Guardian food/travel section. His regular TV and radio appearances include Saturday Cooks and his weekly slot on Market Kitchen, along with BBC R4's The Food Programme.

With thanks to
UnLtd Millennium Awards
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
for development funding

And for the support of
Dominic Cole BA DipLA MLI FI Hort, Landscape architect of The Eden Project
Mark Kelleher Head of BBC Marketing Operations & Technology, and Director of Transport 2000
The Soil Association
Slow Food London
Professor Monique Simmonds, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Andrew Mawson, OBE, Co-Founder, Community Action Network, and BromleybyBow Centre
Judy Ling Wong, OBE, Director, Black Environment Network
Prue Leith OBE and Gordon D'Silva, Hoxton Apprentice/Training for Life
Groundwork West London
David Kirkland, Nicholas Grimshaw Partners, architects of The Eden Project
Sue Minter, former Head of Living Collections, The Eden Project and Chelsea Physic Garden Curator
Lucy Neal, Co-Founder LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre)
Will Hobhouse Chairman, Whittards and Napiers
Dawn Sanders, National Foundation for Educational Research
Normand Park Primary School, Fulham
Jazz Browne, Nubian Life, BME Network, Hammersmith
Ken Martindale, Black British Heritage
Old Oak Community Centre, Hammersmith
Local Agenda 21, Hammersmith & Fulham
Sure Start, Hammersmith & Fulham
Prime Timers
Partners in Leadership, Business in the Community
Bates, Wells & Braithwaite, charity lawyers
Community Action Network (CAN)
The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE)

Website design: Ella Aboutboul
Website technology: Helmut Berns

With thanks for design and photos to:
Anne-Laure Carruth
Erick Vivas
Carol Sharp
Aoife Sheehy, North Haringay Roof Garden Project
Karen Liebreich, Chiswick Kitchen Garden
Jutta Wagner, Chiswick Kitchen Garden
Old Oak Community Centre Gardening Club
Stock.XCHNG
Jonny Chubb


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