🌿 How I Fell in Love with Growing Herbs for Remedies at Home (and How You Can Too)
- Bianca (Bee) Fortin
- Apr 15
- 2 min read
Updated: May 2
There’s something utterly enchanting about having herbs growing in your home. A little rosemary by the kitchen sink, lavender on the windowsill, mint thriving like it owns the place—each one bringing more than just flavor. They bring life, purpose, healing... and, if you ask me, a sprinkle of magic.
Before I go full Hallmark movie on you, let me rewind a bit. I grew up on a farm in South Africa—surrounded by plants, animals, and the steady rhythm of rural life. But the real magic started with my parents. When I was just a baby, my dad received a life-altering diagnosis. Conventional medicine offered little hope, but my mom? She wasn’t having it.
Determined and fierce, she found a naturopathic doctor in California, and together my parents took a path less traveled—one that led not only to healing, but to an entirely new way of living as a family. That spark lit something in her, and she spent the next decades becoming a walking encyclopedia of natural health. Homeopathy, Chinese medicine, herbalism, aromatherapy—you name it, she studied it.
Our home became an apothecary. There were tinctures for every cough, oils for headaches, poultices for everything from burns to bee stings, and chamomile tea before bed that smelled like safety and mom hugs. I didn’t know it at the time, but those moments planted seeds in me too.
Fast forward a few decades—I may not have built a picket fence around a neatly tilled herb garden, but I have explored over twenty-six countries, getting to the the roots of herbal wisdom from friends, grandmothers, healers, and botanists kind enough to share their traditions with me. From the lavender fields of France to Costa Rica’s Carpenter’s bush and Croatia’s Travarica, every herb, every story, added another chapter to my understanding—and deepened my love for the way plants can heal us. And now, I’ve wrapped all of it—my mom’s wisdom, my travel tales, my experiments and flops—into a cozy little e-book:
Planting Remedies: An Witty Guide to Growing Herbs for Remedies
(Free to Herbasal & Sayanah Wellness Subscribers)
This e-book is your hands-on, beginner-friendly guide to growing and using 13 healing herbs—whether you're working with a windowsill, a full garden, or just a big dream and a few empty teacups. Inside, you'll learn how to grow herbs indoors or out, safely harvest them, and create your own teas, tinctures, oils, and salves. You’ll also explore gentle herbal remedies for your furry friends, dive into herbal folklore, and get inspired with gift ideas straight from the garden. It’s warm, a little witty, and packed with practical tips—like your favorite garden gnome, only better.
Already part of the Herbasal or Sayanah Wellness family? Your copy’s on its way—go on and dig in! Not yet? Join us by subscribing to Herbasal to download your free copy below.
So, Whether you’re just getting started with herbs or already have your basil acting like it pays rent, I hope this guide feels like sitting down for tea with a friend. With love, lavender, and a little dirt under my nails,
- Bee (Bianca Fortin)
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