International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated worldwide on 8th March each year.

For 2025, the UK Herb Society are taking the opportunity to celebrate women herbalists throughout history.

In a series of blog posts through March, we will explore the crucial role women had in the origins of herbal medicine and then highlight some of the twentieth century women who dedicated their life energy to facilitating access to and promotion of herbs in medicinal and other purposeful ways.

Herb Society founder, Hilda Leyel is introduced on our website and featured in our IWD post in 2024.

This year, we’re diving deeper to introduce Eleanour Sinclair Rhodes – founding advisor to Hilda Leyel; Maude Grieve – best known for her authoritative book ‘A Modern Herbal’, edited by Hilda Leyel, and Lady Margaret Meade-Fetherstonhaugh who was involved in the Herb Society from the 1940s to the 1970s and a dedicated herbal entrepreneur.

Each of the four posts that take us through our month long International Women’s Day celebration have been written by different female authors, all active in herbal world today and together representing medical herbal practitioners, herbal educators, herbal researchers, herbal students and herbal entrepreneurs.

We’d also like to extend an opportunity for you to get involved, as we seek to represent the full diversity of herbal knowledge and uses. Be part of this by joining the Herb Society – and thereby benefiting from all the membership opportunities including special events, the book group and the student group – or by volunteering with the the lovely bunch of herbal allies that keep the Herb Society vibrant. There are always opportunities to get involved, follow our instagram to hear about specific roles.

A special project we have currently ongoing is to make our archives more accessible. If you enjoy this mini series of IWD posts about herbal histories, and the people who have kept our herbal knowledge alive, you will love getting involved in finding more stories through the archives project.

Explore the Archives

As the Herb Society approaches its Centenary year (2027), we’re excited to be able to develop our website pages to give fuller account of the history of the society and all the fascinating people and stories who’ve been associated with it through the years. There is a wealth of archive material that we’re keen to share more widely, giving plenty of scope for volunteers to get involved. If you’d like to be part of the team helping draw out these stories and developing an engaging set of web pages, get in touch with Nichole at [email protected]