If you have ever picked up a bottle of Rescue Remedy in Boots or Tescos,
or in your local health shop, or even while on holiday in the US or
Europe, you may not know that four of its five active ingredients come
from Brightwell-cum-Sotwell.
Rescue Remedy is a mix of five individual remedies – Star of Bethlehem,
Impatiens, Cherry Plum, Rock Rose and Clematis. All except Clematis grow
in the garden of the Bach Centre, and every bottle of Rescue Remedy in
the world contains remedies made from those Bach Centre plants.
Rock Rose grows at the front of the garden. The plant used is the wild
yellow rose, not one of the many cultivated varieties. (All but three of
the 38 Bach remedy plants are native or naturalised British plants.)
Rock Rose makes the remedy for terror and great fear.
Impatiens glandulifera – known colloquially as policeman’s helmet –
springs up all over the garden, and is the remedy for impatience and
agitation.
Our Star of Bethlehem mostly grows at the back of the house, next to the
bigger pond, and is used to make the remedy against shock and trauma.
And one of the first of the remedies to be made each year – it should be
in flower about the time you read this – comes from the flowers of the
cherry plum tree. Our tree was planted by Nora Weeks, Dr Bach’s
assistant. She stuck a cherry plum stone in the ground and many years
later it is often the first tree to bloom in the early spring. The
Cherry Plum remedy is used for loss of control.
Only Clematis – the remedy against faint, far-away feelings – comes from
outside the village. But not too far away: it grows only a couple of
miles distant.
The early spring is a good time to visit the Bach Centre garden and
perhaps see remedy making in process – and perhaps leave with one or two
bottles of your own.
Stefan Ball
