Eating the weeds

Tamara Segal in a field of yarrow in Jack Taylor Park in Hillier.

Wild herbalist sees food and medicine around us

The first impression you’ll get of Tamara Segal is that she is a true flower child, a product of the wilderness. She’s a small, slender woman with a warm smile and a gentle voice. In her 30s she has long, healthy grey tresses halfway down her back. She dresses in simple, comfortable clothing.

It’s difficult to believe this woman grew up in the suburbs, surrounded by clone houses and pavement and regimented green lawns.

Now, she lives on a farm in the County, treating ailments and teaching people about the abundance of wild herbs that grow around us.

Her journey started as a child, escaping the oppressive suburbs of Toronto by visiting the Don River system, little oases of wilderness surrounded by concrete apartment buildings and traffic.

In her 20s, Segal couldn’t handle that oppression anymore. She needed to get away.

“I was really feeling the need to connect more with nature when I lived in the city,” says Tamara. “At the end there, it was affecting my health. Just the pace, and not being able to be somewhere where I could walk barefoot and connect more with the plants.”

Her partner, Chris, suggested the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, where he had some connections from time spent there. They rented a little house on a lake at the end of a dirt road in the valley.

Suddenly Tamara was as far away from the concrete and noise of the city as she could be, and she blossomed. With a meagre household income and shops being far away, Chris taught Tamara about his knowledge of edible wild plants, gleaned from his time as a chef and learning macrobiotics in California.

The two began to experiment with using that food as sustenance. Tamara grew more and more curious. She spent her time in the woods, discovering the plants at her feet. She spoke to those with more knowledge than her, and learned how to use the plants to make tinctures and teas.

Eventually, she discovered a wild herbalist living on the tiny Denman Island, and began to apprentice with her, collecting herbs and making medicines. At the same time, she began to take courses, learning about the chemistry of herbal medicine.

In 2009, Chris, who grew up in Belleville, learned his mother had died. The couple decided to move back to Ontario, and purchased a farm in the County. Tamara returned to Toronto briefly, taking courses to get her certification as a professional herbalist through the Ontario Herbalist Association.

At the same time, she began to build a clientele through her County home. Eventually, she turned that into Hawthorn Herbals. As a herbalist, she offers medicinal plants, diet and lifestyle advice to those trying to alleviate illnesses. She also offers help with growing herbal gardens and identifying wild flowers and weeds with healthful properties.

This summer, she will host a series of workshops on how to create wild medicine, as well as leading plant identification walks. This fits in with a long-time passion of hers to teach and share about wild plants.

“I just feel like there’s so much that I want to share with people about this stuff. There’s so much abundance, and it’s so readily available, and it’s so empowering to know how to use it. And the plants that we find growing wild around where we live are so nutritionally packed, and they’re so strong,” says Tamara. “They’re so resilient. So in the sense of you are what you eat, I want to be that resilient.”

For her, there is the satisfaction of passing on that joy of empowerment, and the joy, of being able to walk through the woods or even just along the sidewalk, and spot friendly plants everywhere.

Her plant walks only focus on plants that grow in abundance or are invasive species, although she is familiar with rarer and more delicate herbs. She also takes time to ensure those people who walk with her know exactly how to identify the plants. She teaches about important identifiers to separate safe plants from harmful ones.

Beyond herbal medicine, to her plants can be a matter of survival, as they were to her and Chris in the Comox Valley.

“I feel like issues with everything growing in expense, and issues of food security or health, like all these superbugs and all these serious various epidemics that come out, a lot of them can be addressed with a lot of plants that grow in abundance that people think of as invasives or weeds,” says Tamara. “That’s an MO of mine, to help people see them in that way and use them in that way.”