Opening the gates to phytomedicine

Phytofarm, a medicinal plant farm and passion project designed and developed by herbalist and naturopath Valmai Becker, was one of many farms around New Zealand to host an Open Farms event on 21st March.

Open Farms was started in 2020, to bridge the knowledge gap between urban visitors and rural farmers and growers. 37 farms around New Zealand hosted approximately 2,500 visitors from both urban and rural backgrounds and luckily, the weather held out for most! Farmlands Amberley Salesperson Chris Jackson visited Phytofarm in Little River, Canterbury to learn more about land diversity and creating your own balms, teas and herbal medicine. “Phyto” means plant and for Farmlands shareholder Valmai Becker, plants are a way of life. After graduating with a Diploma in Naturopathy in 1980 and holding a position as Co-Owner and Director of the Canterbury College of Natural Medicine, Valmai purchased 12ha of land in 2002. The diversity of the property drew her in, with wetland and forest complementing the bare land. Valmai has since allowed the forest to regenerate back into native bush that invites native birds, particularly morepork back to nest. “While I enjoyed the Canterbury College of Natural Medicine, I missed having a garden. The position within the college involved a lot of administration and I wanted to get back to the land,” Valmai says. “At the time of buying the land, I was also running a natural retreat in Nelson and one attendee asked if I wanted a ginkgo tree. Ginkgos are an amazing tree with a long history of medicinal research into supporting brain health and preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia. That tree was one of the first to be planted and started my education garden. “At first I was just growing enough for myself but eventually ended up producing enough to teach a class how to grow, process and harvest herbs and other plants before blending them into teas and other products,” Valmai says. “Investigating how to process and dry each plant became the main focus, until the garden was growing enough that I could start producing a product range to sell. I also started up an apprenticeship program for people wanting to learn about what plants could give back to you in more depth. “Most of the apprentices are off lifestyle blocks and are wanting to farm more than just sheep and cattle — they are wanting to diversify how their land is being used.”

Flourishing flora and fauna

Diversification is a theme within Phytofarm, with Valmai growing between 65-100 different species of plant, including the herb garden and trees.

| Valmai Becker grows 65-100 plants on Phytofarm, all with a special purpose.

Running a permaculture plant guild in her orchard has also proven to help the trees recover from fungal infections. “More orchards have bare earth under the trees but I’ve planted comfrey, irises, calendula and nasturtiums that bring in beneficial insects and minimise the risk of disease.” Phytofarm is also run organically with most plants best suited to the Canterbury climate. “New Zealand has a very temperate climate so you can grow most things here but often I will travel down to Otago to pick up anything that grows particularly well, such as St. John’s Wort,” Valmai says. The Phytofarm apprentice workshops are run seasonally and each workshop surrounds the plants that are available for the upcoming season. The autumn workshops traditionally focus on making hydrosols, medicinal vinegars, honeys and syrups — while winter will look into nurturing with foot baths and body butters. Spring explores nutrition while summer gets topical with creams, balms and ointments.

Sharing the knowledge

The apprenticeship program was the drawcard for Valmai’s business partner, Andrea Bay. Originally finding her passion for herbal medicine in Germany, Andrea began voluntarily helping out in the garden at Phytofarm after completing her apprenticeship. Eventually she bought into the business, moving herself and her husband onto the farm. Andrea was onhand to run the Open Farms day and was pleasantly surprised at how the event turned out. “It was beautiful weather and we ended up having 42 parties join us on the day,” Andrea says. “We had advertised that the tour would start at 10am but our first group turned up at 9.15am! We had a good mix of visitors, some older and some younger but it was a totally different crowd to the people who usually come for the workshops — it was lovely and is what the Open Farms day is really all about.” Following the tour of the gardens, Andrea demonstrated tea-blending and made a kawakawa salve.

“There were quite a few questions and we encouraged people to interact with the plants, to touch and smell them. “The Open Farms event team were great to deal with, we were sent signs that we could put out on the road to direct people in and had plenty of support leading up to the event. We would definitely run the event again, depending on the timing as it was wonderful to meet people totally new to the topic of herbal medicine,” Andrea says.