About - Wort Journal

A Journal of Radical, Rooted, Relational Herbalism

Front Cover of Wort Journal issue one, in biscuit colour, showing a close up of a foot walking without shoes amongst tall weeds

Front Cover design for Issue two of Wort Journal, in olive green, showing an ancient olive tree with the sun rising behind it.

Golden Orange-Yellow front cover for Wort Journal Issue 3. Spring weeds grow in the foreground with a mouse scurrying in the undergrowth, whilst in the background an industrial factory can be seen.

“For lovers of weeds and wildflowers.

For those who honour plants as kin and those working to make change at the root.”

About Wort Journal

‘Wort’ is an old word for a plant used as food or medicine.

It describes plants that feed and heal us. The ones that maintain and make us whole.

People have had this special relationship with some plants for as long as people have been around.

‘Wort’ names a relationship fundamental to human existence.

This journal is for lovers of weeds and wildflowers. It is for those who honour plants as kin and those working to make change at the root.

Each issue collects contributions from persons working in ways that resonate with the long traditions of world-entangled, community-embedded folk herbalism.

Wort platforms plantwork that is deeply holistic and intersectional. Plantwork that roots itself in the heritage of common knowledge and in relationship with the land.

Beautifully illustrated with pen and ink drawing throughout.

“We want plant medicine to be common knowledge and practice again.

Nature is for all of us, because all of us are part of nature. Herbalism as the people’s medicine. Plantwork as resistance.”

Project Aims

To inspire people to love herbs and work with them.

To nurture radical, decolonial, ecological social change. To be nourishing humus; to be pushing roots; to be potent seeds and visionary spores; to be toppling vines, reaching branches, and relentless new growth.

To honour the knowledge and practice of folk herbalism, in all its diverse traditions and contemporary forms, alongside the specialisation and expertise of medical herbalism and herbalists, and recognising the fertile ground between them.

To give a platform for herbalists and plantworkers of all kinds to share their work. Including persons who have not written for publication before, persons who are not experts, persons whose voices may not have space elsewhere.

To illuminate, encourage and support caring human relationships with plants and the more-than-human world.

To understand community and relationship as the soil for radical herbal practice and to foster these things in our work.

To help grow a mycelial network of radical plant folk.

To become sustainable for those involved. To pay contributors within our means.

To balance this sustainability with economic accessibility.

To nourish the culture of small-scale independent trading in defiance of the corporatisation of everything.

To reflect the beauty, joy and wonder of the plants themselves and of the land.

Project Values

1. Nurturing Networks

This project gives voice to persons working with medicinal plants in ways that resonate with the community-embedded, vitalist traditions of folk herbalism, with the aim to support and inspire a growing movement of everyday herbal practice.

2. Pushing the Narratives

Herbalism has always been political, deeply bound with histories of colonial, class and gender violence, repression and theft. Modern ‘Western’ herbalism is equally shaped by this colonial inheritance: of private land ownership; of profit-driven healthcare industries, of social injustice; of institutionalisation and boundarying of access; of accelerating ecocide. This project aims to make visible and openly explore herbalism’s political threads.

3. Honouring Herbal Heritage

This project celebrates all folk herbal lineages, in all of their diversity, alongside specialised knowledge and the precision of science, whilst also critiquing the rationalist scientific drive to mechanise the vital, living earth and separate us from it. It encourages taking pride in these traditions as a part of our cultural identities and the recognition of folk knowledge as wisdom; seeking to make space for herbalism within the canon of folk arts.

4. Reclaiming Herbal Commons

We reject the corporate healthcare and wellness industries or herbalism as a middle-class alternative therapy. We reject State-sanctioned legitimacy. We want plant medicine to become common knowledge and practice again. We want all people empowered with the knowledge to work with local plants safely to meet simple health needs. Reclaiming power from the pharmaceutical industry. Fostering community resilience to capitalist extractivist systems. Fostering ecological resilience: cultivating reciprocal relationships with the lands that nurture us; conspiring for a plant-led future. And we want for everyone to have the opportunity to know, love and value the wild plants and weeds that grow at our feet – in all of their beauty and wonder and joy. Nature is for all of us, because all of us are part of nature. Herbalism as the people’s medicine. Plantwork as resistance.