Salena Walker

05/10/2026

I'm very excited to be going home to my hometown of Aberdare this Wednesday to give a talk for the Women's Institute.

You don't have to be a member to come along. Your first two meetings are free, but do bring £1 for the raffle!

This one feels extra special for me. So much of the story I share is rooted in Aberdare, my childhood there and the generations of my family who came from the area, so it will be lovely to bring the story home and share it there. ❤️

Come along I would love to see you there x

30/09/2026

I love how Calendula just keeps giving. 🧡

The season is changing and the garden is starting to slow down, but the Calendula is still opening its petals every morning and welcoming the bees. It is also a very welcome addition to my herbal shelves.

I’ll keep picking the flowers for as long as they keep coming. These will be going into the dehydrator so I have access to this vibrant medicine all year round, although I already know that some of this batch is destined for a skin-soothing balm later in the year.

This is one of the reasons I love growing my own medicinal plants so much. I know exactly where they have come from, how they have been grown and when they were harvested, and I can preserve enough when they are abundant to use throughout the rest of the year.

Calendula really is one of those plants that just keeps on giving. 🧡

29/09/2026

I thoroughly enjoyed leading a herbal walk around Coedwig Pengelli for Cwm A***n 🌿

This is one of my favourite ways to teach herbalism outside, surrounded by the plants themselves, learning to recognise what is growing around us and exploring how those plants have been used.

Of course it rained a bit but I am still grateful for every drop after the summer. We all piled into one of the beautiful wooden huts in the woods, where I shared the story of Llyn y Fan Fach over shots of Eidral (Ground Ivy) tea.

For me, this is what herbalism is about. It isn’t only learning a list of herbs and their actions. It is getting to know the plants growing around us, the land they grow in, their Welsh names, and the stories and traditions that connect us to them.

We’re hoping to collaborate again and organise another walk at Coedwig Pengelli next spring.

If spending a few hours wandering through the woods learning about our local medicinal plants sounds like your kind of thing, make sure you’re on my newsletter. That’s where I share news of upcoming walks, workshops and events.

You can sign up through the link to my website https://www.salenawalker.earth

24/09/2026

Ro’n i ar Radio Cymru y bore’ma.

Dyma'r rhaglen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0031p9w

Dw i ar y rhaglen tua 36 munud i mewn.

I was on Radio Cymru this morning.

The program link is in the Welsh text above.

I am on the program about 36 minutes in.

Straeon cyfredol, cerddoriaeth, a holi'r cwestiynau sydd ar feddwl pawb.

24/09/2026

Dw i ar Radio Cymru y bore 'ma. Tua 9:30!! I'm on Radio Cymru this morning. Around 9:30!!

22/09/2026

Have you got a copy of my new free e-book yet? Explore exciting ways to use herbal tea other than drinking it! If you love herbalism and welsh folklore this is perfect for you.

Comment PANED in the comments to get your FREE copy.

01/09/2026

I’ve just harvested our first sweetcorn, and it’s a two for the price of one deal in the garden!!!

I get delicious sweetcorn to eat and corn silk medicine to save for later in the year. I’ll simply chop off the exposed bit of silk that has gone black and dry in the sun, then dry the rest in the dehydrator ready to use for medicine.

Corn silk tea is delicious and a lovely medicine for the whole urinary tract. It’s a gentle diuretic while also helping to soothe the lining of the urinary tract and bladder, so it’s a useful medicine to have on hand.

If you grow sweetcorn, or buy whole corn on the cob still in its husks, don’t throw the silk away. Save your corn silk! 🌽🌿

30/08/2026

This photo is from nine years ago and there is so much in this one photo I don’t even know where to start.

When we bought the land we now live on, there was a huge stone lying in our stream. After lots of research and conversations with local people, I discovered it was Preseli bluestone. The old tithe maps also revealed the names of our fields, Parc Cerrig Isaf and Parc Cerrig Uchaf, and locals told me that many of the stones had been moved to the edges of the fields over the years. This particular stone looked to me like it may once have been a standing stone, so before we built our house or dug our gardens, we raised it and moved it from the stream to a central point in the field. At the end of the day someone placed a Welsh flag beside it, to ground the dragon energy with the stone.

A few weeks later my dad suddenly died. My dad was my rock. He was always there and, for many years from my late teens, it was just me and Dad living together. I had raised this huge Preseli bluestone on my land and just a few weeks later the biggest rock in my life was gone.

In the years after Dad died I found myself searching for my roots because his death had ripped those roots apart. That search took me deeper into my Welsh culture and history and eventually back to learning the language. Over time, all of those threads came together in the creation of Wild Welsh Herbalism.

Dad was the person who taught me how to grow plants and make my first herbal infusion. He was also a carpenter, and after he died we built our wooden cabin here in the woods. Every time I smelt the freshly cut wood, I thought of Dad.

The area around this stone is now known as ‘my ancestors’. I feel Dad there, although in truth he is everywhere here. He is in my work, my house and very often beside me in the garden.

So this photo is far more than a photo of me and my cariad standing beside a rock. ❤️

29/08/2026

I love creating tea bowls. What is a tea bowl? Quite simply, a bowl full of fresh herbs so people can choose the plants they are drawn to and create their own herbal infusion.

This was a tea bowl I created for my students, and I even included a member of one of the trickiest plant families to identify, the umbellifer family, or what I nickname the ‘upside-down white umbrella family’. This family contains some of our most poisonous plants, including hemlock and hemlock water-dropwort. You’ll be pleased to know neither of those made it into the tea bowl!!!

With this plant family, never identify a plant from the flowers alone. Look at the whole plant, including the leaves and stems, where and how it is growing and, when available, the seeds. If you’re not sure, watch the plant through a whole year and learn how it changes through the seasons. If you’re still in doubt, don’t use it... come home with an empty basket 💚

Learning to confidently identify the plants around us is such an important part of my Wild Welsh Herbalism courses.

How many herbs can you recognise in this tea bowl?

28/08/2026

I have lived in Wales all of my life. I was born in Aberdâr in the Valleys, spent nine years living in North Wales in Gwynedd and Conwy, and now I live in West Wales in Carmarthenshire. Wherever I have lived, I have always loved walking the hills and mountains. To me, it is part of our culture here in Wales.

This week I was feeling a real yearning for the hills. I’m lucky enough to live at the foot of the Preseli Hills, so after work one evening we walked up one of my favourite hills, Foel Drygarn.

It takes my breath away every time I stand up there amongst the three Bronze Age burial cairns, built around 4,000 years ago, surrounded by the remains of an Iron Age fort with would have had more than 270 hut platforms. Standing amongst those stones and thinking about all the people who have stood on that hill before me makes me feel rooted, just like the plants in the earth.

The hills, mountains and stones are also part of what I teach in Wild Welsh Herbalism because I don’t believe you can separate the plants from the land and culture they grow within. The medieval Physicians of Myddfai even included Preseli bluestone in their medicine.

So when I feel a calling to the hills and mountains, it isn’t just a calling for fresh air and a good walk. It is a calling to connect with the land, the stones and, most of all, the history of my culture. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿