Our new apothecary WONDER GARDEN isn’t just a collection. It’s a world of WONDER. 3.7 billion years of Nature’s wisdom. The deeper we looked into forests, trees, plants and the intelligence of living systems, the more WONDER GARDEN transformed from an apothecary collection into a philosophy of relationship with Nature itself. Tea became sunlight in liquid form. Trees became biological allies. And WONDER became a way of seeing again.

In our founder Frieda’s new essay, she explores the books, science and revelations that shaped the collection. And it all began in the garden at Trematon, Cornwall.

During those first years at Trematon, as the garden slowly started to reshape the way we saw Nature and our place within it, there were some other important teachers in the shape of books that played a pivotal part in accompanying our deepening understanding that all life is interconnected.

I credit reading the right book, falling into my lap at the right time, with altering the course of my life and our business. Interestingly they are rarely business books, but cultural ones that fundamentally changed the way I experienced the world itself; especially the books that seemed to lift a veil modern life had drawn across reality, returning me to the astonishing understanding that the world is far more alive, intelligent and awe-inspiring than we are conditioned to notice. They reminded me that existence is not ordinary at all, but miraculous beyond comprehension, and that perhaps the tragedy of modernity is not just that we are destroying the living world, but that we have stopped truly seeing it for the extraordinary wonder that it is.

Two books in particular became pivotal, dog-eared companions during those years at Trematon, both written by female elders and biologists, each carrying a similar message of Indigenous ecological wisdom; one Celtic, rooted in the landscapes of my own birth land, the other depicting the most beautiful vision of America I could ever imagine through Native teachings of reciprocity, relationship and reverence for life itself.

What moved me so profoundly about both Braiding Sweetgrass and To Speak for the Trees was that for the first time (in my reading experience) neither asked me to choose between wonder and science, spirituality and biology, enchantment and evidence. Instead, they revealed how deeply intertwined these ways of seeing the world are, showing that the closer we look scientifically at the living world, the more astonishing, intelligent and miraculous it often becomes.

While the garden was slowly teaching us through lived experience, I credit these extraordinary books with helping me see the world properly again through the eyes of wonder. Both blew my mind, and at times moved me to tears, with the sheer beauty, improbability and awe-some intelligence of it all.

What a completely wondrous system of life we’re a part of, to support us and help us thrive through being in relationship – if only we could see it for what it was.. 

And perhaps most profoundly, both books returned me to the understanding that we are not separate from Nature, observing it from the outside, but Nature itself made conscious; participants within a vast living system of reciprocity, relationship and interdependence that humans have spent far too long imagining ourselves above rather than within.

I will never look at wild strawberries as anything other than tiny red hearts and gifts from the Earth after reading Braiding Sweetgrass. Despite already revering trees, To Speak for the Trees completely blew both mine and Javvy’s minds with the science itself; the extraordinary biological intelligence of forests, the vast underground fungal communication networks, and the revelation that trees release bioactive compounds including phytoncides and terpenes capable of directly influencing human physiology by regulating stress, supporting immune function, reducing inflammation and calming the nervous system.

The more we learnt, the more impossible it became to see trees merely as scenic background or symbolic metaphors. Suddenly they revealed themselves as active participants in human wellbeing and planetary health, sustaining atmospheric balance, cooling ecosystems, purifying air, stabilising soil and engaging in complex biochemical relationships with the wider web of life around them.

And this new knowledge made us totally rethink our plans for WONDER GARDEN. Originally, our new apothecary collection had been based around more conventional herbalism, but the deeper we immersed ourselves in the science and wisdom of trees, the more we knew we needed to pivot the formulations towards more arboreal ingredients and forest compounds instead.

We recognised that trees are not only some of the planet’s oldest living beings, but also among our greatest biological allies.

They support human life through invisible relationships we are only just beginning to properly understand.

And so gradually, the collection began organising itself around two trees in particular, chosen slowly and intentionally over long days of mixing, tasting and experimenting in the Trematon kitchen with the brilliant herbalist Harriet Coleman, whose deep knowledge of plant medicine helped us think not simply about flavour (or fragrance), but about the physiological and seasonal qualities each tree carried too.

For the SunSeason of Spring and Summer, we were drawn toward Linden, a tree long- associated with the heart, nervous system regulation and emotional softness, whose flowers contain flavonoids and compounds traditionally used to ease anxiety, support circulation and gently soothe our overstimulated modern bodies back toward balance. There is something deeply generous and expansive about Linden, a tree that flowers as the Solstice peaks.

Hawthorn became the natural counterpart for the MoonSeason of Autumn and Winter; a tree known for centuries as both protector and healer, rich in antioxidant compounds and traditionally used to strengthen and support the cardiovascular system, while symbolically long associated with stillness and the unseen worlds of Winter.

So, I’m very grateful to Diana Beresford-Kroeger , To Speak for the Trees turned us onto the astonishing intelligence of trees and, in many ways, completely reshaping the direction of WONDER GARDEN itself. Once we started to see forests not simply as stunning scenery but as active biological allies participating in our wellbeing, there was no going back.

The more we learnt, the more astonishing it felt that Nature does not simply generate beauty and nourishment randomly, but often offers precisely what living systems require at different points within the seasonal cycle itself.

WONDER GARDEN was never about simply creating a product line, but it was now becoming much more about honouring our relationship with Nature. The upsides were the benefits that emerge naturally as a consequence of being reconnected to the living systems we are a part of. This was an invitation to experience the living world not as something separate from us to consume, but as something we are already in constant conversation, through breath, skin, scent, season, nervous system and ritual.

Even the materials became part of that philosophy of reciprocity and return. We spent years developing and waiting for Vivomer packaging, made from soil microbes by Shellworks, because the idea that these products could biodegrade safely back into the soil they came from felt profoundly important, turning the ritual into something circular rather than extractive.

Not simply taking from the Earth, but participating in an ongoing exchange with life itself.

This was a way of distilling that relationship into daily acts of attention and reciprocity; something sippable, smellable, touchable and sensory that might help people feel, even momentarily, feel a little more connected to the astonishing intelligence and aliveness woven through the world around them.

Part of our own rise in consciousness as we created the collection was the realisation that tea is not simply tea when you really stop to consider it, but sunlight transformed through photosynthesis and drawn upward through roots before eventually becoming nourishment within the body. I love both the poetry and the scientific truth of the idea that when we drink SunSeason we are, in many ways, drinking golden sunlight in liquid form; light translated by plants into compounds capable of nourishing, regulating and supporting another living system entirely.

And how washing with a bar of our Garden soap is not simply cleaning us, but an exchange between water, plants, skin and biology, while the arboreal-based candles are not merely fragrance but forests and resins and volatile compounds once held within trees now moving invisibly through breath, memory and nervous system. One living system continually responding to another.

Yet perhaps one of the saddest consequences of modern life is how quickly we learnt to stop noticing any of this at all, despite living inside an event so miraculous it almost defies comprehension. Because for all we currently know, life in all its intelligence, beauty and strangeness, may only have emerged here on Earth; this small blue-green planet suspended within the vast silence of the cosmos

Rachel Carson once wrote that if she could gift every child one thing, it would be “a sense of wonder so indestructible” that it would survive the disenchantment of adulthood.

I think about that often. Somewhere along the way, the innate faculty of wonder I believe we are all born with, slowly diminishes beneath the stories modern culture tells us; that humans are separate from Nature, that the living world exists primarily for extraction, and that value belongs only to what can be measured, owned or consumed.

And with that story of separation, the world becomes something to use. But when the story of interconnection is remembered, the world becomes something to care for again. A reminder that Nature is not separate from us. That the body is not separate from the Earth. That the seasons are not inconveniences to override but intelligent rhythms to participate within. That perhaps the remedies we are searching for have been in the Garden all along.

Wonder restores our attention. Attention restores our relationships. And we are naturally moved to protect them.

As we no longer see tea as tea, but sunlight made liquid; the energy of stars transformed by leaves and roots into something we drink into ourselves, becoming part of us in the most literal and miraculous sense.

The Magic is real.