Timeline: 2022-2025

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Bush Medicine Revival uses a medicinal garden and storytelling to promote community healing and environmental stewardship through the recovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge on Bequia.

Bush Medicine Revival is supported by the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development and Goethe-Institut and is a part of their Cultural and Artistic Responses to Environmental Change. In 2023, we were awarded a grant from the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Conservation Fund (SVGCF), which continues to build on the foundation of the prior grants from PCF and Goethe-Institut.

Ecological Medicine Garden Design in collaboration with Chatoyer Gardens.

The initiative is three-pronged:

A Documentary Film: "Bush Medicine: Stories that Remember the Land" (37 minutes) stands as the first short-form documentary produced by The Hub Collective. It powerfully highlights traditional ecological knowledge, storytelling, and the vital preservation of the Grenadines' cultural heritage. This film has been officially selected for the Hairouna Film Festival in both 2024 and 2025, with the 2024 curated program, Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE), showcasing it in Barbados and Poland, and the 2025 Rapport Festival (Black Film Festival) featuring it in the UK.
An Illustrated Medicinal Guidebook: This guidebook is an essential resource that brings together local traditional knowledge and scientific insights from local experts. It effectively identifies native bush medicines, outlining their folk medicinal properties, spiritual applications, and practical uses on Bequia, firmly integrating traditional lore and scientific understanding.
A Community Medicinal Garden (Winter 2025): Our groundbreaking experimental bush medicine garden will host dozens of medicinal plants and represents a strategic collaboration between The Hub Collective and Chatoyer Gardens under the impactful project #GreeningTheGrenadines. This initiative will promote ecological farming, regenerative agriculture, landscape restoration, soil reclamation, and nature protection. It is designed to educate the Bequia community on ecological principles and foster sustainable relationships with nature, directly supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals 3, 13, and 15: Good Health and Well-Being, Climate Action, and Life on Land.

Documentary

"Bush Medicine: Stories that Remember the Land''

"Bush Medicine: Stories that Remember the Land'' (37 minutes) focuses on traditional knowledge and the power of intergenerational exchange, two critical aspects of recovery and remembering for Grenadines' consciousness. The documentary dives into stories of elders and younger practitioners across Bequia and St. Vincent. It engages in their memories of the land, the importance of bush medicine in daily living, subsistence agriculture and traditions that were once important in our communities.

Producers: Holly Bynoe, Jessica Jaja, Colin Peters | Cinematography: Javid Collins | Editor: Dante Ollivierre | In collaboration with Offhannd Studio.

Watch the full documentary below

Still Photos

Bush Medicine Revival Guidebook

Download the Illustrated Medicinal Guidebook here.

The guidebook highlights local traditional knowledge supported by scientific knowledge from local experts. Its purpose is to identify local bush medicines, primarily native species, with their folk medicinal properties, spiritual applications and uses on Bequia using both traditional and scientific knowledge and lore.

Illustrations and design: Anusha Jiandani

Writer: Holly Bynoe

Editor: Jessica Jaja

Photography: Holly Bynoe

Copy Editor: Vanessa Simmons

Illustration Gallery

Illustration of front cover for Medicinal Guidebook. Illustration and design work by Anusha Jiandani

Community Medicinal Garden

Our team regularly gathers at the Garden in Port Elizabeth alongside Luke and Alex Punnett of @chatoyergardens and other volunteers to continue growing this space. In the past few years, we have transformed the soil from poor quality to rich and fertile, now flourishing with an abundance and variety of medicinal plant species, such as aloe, sorrel, roucou, shadow beni, and more! Altogether, over 40 species of medicinals, fruit trees, and grasses populate the garden.

In addition, we regularly host workshops that focus on various garden needs, from composting to developing home gardens across the island. During these sessions, we spend time in the classroom learning about the importance of trees in our tropical ecosystems, climate-resilient technologies, composting techniques, ecological principles and applicable water management systems.

Home Gardens & Maintenance

In November 2024, we produced an Ecological Gardening Workshop, a 15-hour program where participants learnt a mixture of theory and practice - getting their hands dirty while gardening, planting trees, learning about composting, and so much more. Certificates of Completion were given to six individuals, while a certificate of participation was awarded to 5 individuals. The six individuals who completed the workshop were allowed to receive Home Garden support through Chatoyer Gardens and The Hub Collective.

Two participants expressed keen interest and had existing working gardens, which made them ideal candidates for this activity. Both participants benefited from two visits, including personalised garden sketches, creating a thermophilic compost, and helping plan their garden space for growth.

We also supported the Lower Bay School in a planting effort with the course participants, including learning how to use an A-Frame and creating half-moon berms and swales. Leon’s Gardening Services regularly maintained the garden thoroughly, did additional work grading the land, and conducted additional landscaping using fine stone and grass. Weather-resistant protective coverings were made locally for our bench and picnic table to preserve them from the elements.

Permablitz’

Over two years, we invited members from across all communities to attend, learn about Bequia’s biodiversity, and improve the garden's soil health so that we can continue to plant new species and evolve our space.

We introduced the ‘No Dig/Lasagna’ compost method with rich and engaging teaching by Chatoyer Gardens. The technique of layering high nitrogen materials (animal dung), green materials (such as banana bodies), and brown, woody materials (like cardboard and dried sargassum) immensely improves the soil health of the area, making it rich for planting.

We have seen stony ground transform into a fertile microclimate that offers a counterargument and alternative experience to the often depleted conversation on Bequia around soil health, the washing away of nutrients, and the myth that food security is a thing of the past.

Bush Medicine Revival