Today is Canada’s National Day for Truth & Reconciliation We honour Indigenous peoples: survivors of residential schools & the 60s Scoop, the lives lost to MMIW & the Highway of Tears, and the erasure of Two-Spirit people We acknowledge genocide, racism, grief, and the land Listen. Learn. Act 🧡

Native bees and wasps pollinating my fall-blooming native asters 💚

Starting this October, The Poison Garden will begin hosting two live online classes per month via Zoom. Class topics will be focused on plants and mushrooms, herbalism, gardening, ethnobotany, and botanical folklore. Registration is now open. thepoisongarden.com/product-cate...

Save 20% off all flower essences and flower elixirs this week only! Sale ends on Friday at midnight eastern time. thepoisongarden.com

“We look brave,” said Frog. “Yes, but are we?” asked Toad.

I put a jasmine plant in my living room and now it always smells like jasmine green tea in there 💚

Gouche paintings of deadly foxgloves (digitalis sp.) by Hans Simon Holtzbecker, circa 1649–1659.

It's seed saving time. Wrapped up my atropa belladonna plants with cheesecloth so I don't lose the berries and all their seeds to the ground or the birds.

Clammy ground cherry (physalis heterophylla) is a poisonous nightshade native to eastern N. America. The whole plant is toxic to ingest with the exception of the ripe fruits. There are 80+ physalis species in the Americas with many used as a food source by indigenous peoples.

An incredibly accurate atropa belladonna gouche painting by German artist Hans Simon Holtzbecker, circa 1649–1659.

One time I went to my rural village's halloween party dressed as a local man in a 3/4 zip sweater, puffer vest, jeans, a ballcap, and patchy facial hair and went and stood with a big group of them who were "too cool" to wear costumes and none of them noticed I was a woman for the whole party.

Went for a walk after dark to harvest some wild mint from a ditch and the moonlight was reflecting off the waterlily pads in the river, the frogs and crickets were singing a symphony, and the stars were hanging like celestial fruit in the cloud-like boughs of the white pines.

Here's the newsletter with the full list of shipping updates for the USA, Canada, Ireland & the UK. There's lots of important info so please read all the way through to have any questions or concerns answered. mailchi.mp/thepoisongar...

Vegetables woodblock print by Japanese artist Utagawa Shigenobu, 1866.

My shipping to the USA will be temporarily paused this weekend while I manually update my table rate shipping now that I know what the new tariff fees are. Duties are paid by the seller before shipment so customers should not get unexpected bills. Thank you for your patience while I do the math.

Illustration of poisonous amanita and false morel mushrooms from the culturally important "One Thousand American Fungi" by Charles McIlvaine and Robert Macadam first published in 1902. I love that the little devil is reading a toxicology book.

I don't want to log on to the internet, I just want to listen to disco snails on repeat while making arts and crafts. (Art by D.D. McInnes, 2022)

In love with this painting of a frog in a copper pot by American artist Aaron Brent Harker from 1977.

I'm currently running a sale for 20% off everything in the apothecary until this Monday at midnight (eastern time). Stock up on favourites or discover new ones! thepoisongarden.com

The other day I found a belladonna berry from the garden sitting on my perfectly made bed. Not sure if it was left by spirits or fey in a horsehead-godfather way or a crow leaving their human friend a shiny trinket way, but i'm going with the crow energy.

Poisonous plant and fungi colorized wood engravings by Scottish artist Jonathan Johnstone, 1855.

I'm thrilled to have @thepoisongarden.bsky.social on Fabulous Folklore Presents! We talk about poisonous plants, how to grow them, why poisonous plants are important to ecosystems, the "natural = safe" false assumption, and plants you might be surprised to learn are poisonous! youtu.be/XVQG5VfNf54

Love it when the sun is orange during the day from all the wildfire smoke, it's not alarming at all /s

It's belladonna berry time in the poison garden. So shiny and black, like little obsidian witch's scrying mirrors framed with pentagrams.

Look at this mutated horseweed! It's supposed to look like the plant next to it but instead it's a tiny world on the end of a stem.

The volunteer blue vervain plant that popped up in my driveway this spring is doing well in it's new spot in the back garden. I'm leaving it alone in the hopes it reseeds itself into a whole blue vervain patch. It is one of my all-time favourite medicinal native plants.

*whispers* "for the pollinators" as I let the horseweed tower above all the other flowers in the garden.

The first fruits of summer apothecary restock is now live! Enjoy a selection of new, seasonal, and restocked artisanally crafted botanical goods from The Poison Garden. thepoisongarden.com

Turns out red and dark tulip flowers are antioxidant rich and really beneficial to the skin. Tulip oil moisturizes, protects, smooths, and repairs skin. There happens to be a lot of red, purple, and black tulips in the apothecary's garden and the result is a new skincare oil launching this Sunday.

First Fruits of Summer Apothecary Update & Restock: Sunday, July 27 @ 10am ET Featuring four seasonal herbal elixirs to sooth the mind, heart, and soul: strawberry + heartsease elixir, rose petal elixir, violet flower elixir, and waterlily elixir.

Look who I found sneaking into my garden. I've never had to plant bittersweet nightshade (solanum dulcamara) except for when I had a rooftop garden. It always finds me and it and black nightshade appearing in my veggie patch is what first got me into growing and working with medicinal nightshades.

Made another colour illustration over the weekend, this time of my photo of a bumblebee bum in a belladonna flower. My cartoony drawing style looks really cutesy in colour, lol.

If you're familiar with my art, you know I have mainly worked in black & white for over 15 years. I've been thinking about working with colour lately and yesterday I went for it and illustrated one of my favourite photos I took this spring of a bumblebee pollinating Solomon's seal in my garden.

There's a fledgeling robin perched on my belladonna right now. Just look at it's little tufts of baby feathers 🥹

The art sale is postponed due to accidentally crashing the whole website last night while trying to fix glitches with the mobile version and then the crash undid all the work I did on the sale 🙃 Fixed the crash error but the mobile site errors still elude me.

Some of my favourite native medicinal plants growing by the river. They all like full sun and moist soil. 1. Rose milkweed (asclepias incarnata) 2. Spotted joe pyeweed (eutrochium maculatum) 3. Marsh scullcap (scutellaria galericulata) 4. Blue Vervain (verbena hastata)

This is where I pack and ship apothecary orders from; my little vintage living room slash office. It's my happy refuge from the world's troubles. Almost everything is thrifted or second hand.

Native black elderberry (sambucus canadensis) blooming in the poison garden.

I thought I had wild raspberry invading the garden but when I went to pick them after they turned red and they weren’t ripe so I waited a week and it turns out I have black raspberry (rubus occidentalis) which is native to northeastern North America where I live. Yay to past me who didn’t weed it!

This is so interesting! www.sciencealert.com/tomatoes-in-...

Viper’s bugloss (echium vulgare) is native to Eurasia and introduced here in NE N. America. It is simultaneously edible, medicinal, and poisonous. Edible only in moderation and better cooked due to the hairy leaves. Its pyrrolizidine alkaloids accumulate in the liver so ingest short term only.

Added heartsease flowers (aka johnny jump ups) and wild strawberries from the garden into the strawberry elixir. It will be a heart soothing potion of vine ripe strawberries, fresh heartsease and rose petals, and two of my homeopathic flower essences for the heart: bleeding heart and foxglove.

Finally caught a photo of a bumble bee bum in the belladonna flowers! Bumble bees love a poisonous plant and are immune to many toxins. They are frequent visitors to the poison garden.

I don’t just work with plants, I’m also an illustrator (a published one even). Here’s my pen and ink illustrations of two insects zombified by fungi:

*dumps handful of wild strawberries from the garden into the strawberry elixir* Might add some fresh heartsease flowers and some flower essences to turn it into a heart healing potion or something.

I love being in the woods and not knowing wtf is going on in the stock market

The jack-in-the-pulpit in the poison garden is pregnant for the first time! I hope it has all the babies and turns into a big patch 💚

Sometimes my job is picking peony and rose petals from the garden to make into skincare and medicine while immersed in their soothing scent all day and I love that for me.

Bone + Joint Balm is restocked! A favourite for soothing pain and swelling of the joints, hands and feet. It’s a friend to those with arthritis and chronic pain. (Not available in Canada) thepoisongarden.com/product/bone...

The summer sale is now live. Take a peek at what baneful botanical goods I’m currently offering and help keep the apothecary running and my kids fed while the world descends further into chaos. 20% off apothecary goods 10% off seeds & growing guides June 25, 26 & 27 thepoisongarden.com