A Herbal Dispensary
The Urban Fringe Dispensary is about herbal medicine in the context of urban transition culture. It has been set up by Bristol Herbalist, Max Drake, with the aim of providing a shared knowledge base and use of local resources, including wild and cultivated herbs for medicines.
You will find us at our shop, dispensary and clinic on Colston Street in Bristol. You can come in here and get free impartial information on health and how a holistic approach might be able to help you.
Our practice extends out from herbal medicine to include counselling, therapeutic massage, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, reflexology, shiatsu and reiki.
What We Do
We do walks, talks, workshops, and run courses all connected to herbs and how to use them. These are designed for a whole range of individuals and interest groups, from absolute beginners to practising herbalists.
We are also engaged in cultivating medicinal herbs and mapping the local area for herbs that can be foraged sustainably for professional and domestic use. At the risk of stating the obvious, we believe that an essential part of learning herbal medicine is about getting to know the herbs. This includes what they look like, how they grow, and generally having a direct perceptual experience of them in their prime, whilst they are still in the soil. This is a factor that is largely missing from contemporary herbal medicine courses. Also, in the spirit of transition awareness, it makes sense to grow medicinal plants locally, to build up community resilience in the face of near future changes in legislation and availability of resources (such as the resources that are required for the manufacture and distribution of pharmaceutical medicines). It makes equal sense to spread the knowledge and skills required to use native and local plants and medicinal preparations, empowering folk to take responsibility for their health and the health of the community.
Sustainability Goals of the Urban Fringe Dispensary Project
The majority of medicinal herbs on sale in this country (possibly greater than 90%), are grown abroad. One of the main aims of the Urban Fringe Dispensary project is to develop an indigenous pharmacopoeia, where herbs are mostly sourced from the UK, with the majority coming from the local area. With this aim in mind we would encourage herbalists to explore and regain the knowledge of our forebears about uses of the many indigenous herbs that have gone out of fashion, largely as a result of the profits that can be made from importing more exotic sounding herbs.
We want to support herb growers in and around Bristol, so if that sounds like you, please get in touch.