Phytotherapy (n): The use of plants or plant extracts for medicinal therapy.

Join Evelyn Coggins, our resident phytotherapist, on a horseback ramble through forests and clearings in search of plants that have been successfully used to protect good health and treat disease throughout the ages. Evelyn is a graduate of the clinical herbal medicine program at Dominion Herbal College and a registered herbal practitioner in private practice in Pemberton, B.C.

Herbal medicine is one of the most ancient forms of health care, both an art and a science that has been refined and perfected over thousands of years. Remedies that worked were passed on, initially by word of mouth, and later by means of written pharmacopoeias. Today's phytotherapy blends the empirical herbal wisdom of the past with the rational results of scientific study conducted in many countries over the last twenty-five years.

The first known phytotherapists in the richly diverse, productive coniferous forests of B.C.'s Pacific Coast were the First Nations people, who made use of at least one hundred and sixty plants in their pharmacopoeias. Family doctors in Canada and the United States were also practicing phytotherapists, relying on traditional herbal remedies to treat disease and alleviate human suffering until the advent of synthetic drugs in the 1920's. Since the late 1960's there has been a resurgence of interest in medicinal plants, and today approximately 25% of modern medicines are still made from plants that were first used in traditional medicine. You are cordially invited to come and meet some of these plants where they live.

The bear is quick tempered and fierce in many ways, and yet he pays attention to herbs which no other animal notices at all. The bear digs these for his own use... We consider the bear as chief of all animals in regard to herb medicine.Siyaka (Teton Sioux Music)