Plant Energy – Chicago Health

The small pharmacy sows the seeds of “folk medicine” in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood

In the middle of a community garden in Englewood, there's a red box labeled “Free Medicine.” Inside the box is a treasure trove of herbs and ointments: mugwort, beeswax, yarrow, and other natural ointments for various conditions.

This free little pharmacy is the brainchild of Loyola University medical student and community farming advocate Sharmeen Siddiqui. She says she hopes the project will showcase a sustainable and preventative model of medicine.

My friend says the plants have “profound medicinal power.” I started making herbal first aid protest kits in May 2020 during the George Floyd uprisings for people protesting in the streets. That period, near the beginning of the pandemic, saw a boom in Little Free Libraries and Free Fridge initiatives across the city — people banding together to anonymously offer resources to their neighbors.

My friend was a weed program assistant at the agricultural nonprofit Urban Growers Collective at the time, and she connected with urban growers, like Sistas in the Village, a nearby urban farm that offers education about food, plants, and nutrition. My friend partnered with Sistas and now runs her own pharmacy using plants grown on her farm.

Herbal medicine, or herbal therapy, is the basis of almost all medicine – Western or traditional Chinese. Many modern medicines are rooted in plants, such as the painkiller morphine, which comes from the poppy. Penicillin, one of the first antibiotics, grew from a fungus. Medicines derived from the flowers (Madagascar periwinkle) treat leukemia in children.

Plant care and communities

Inglewood, like many South Side communities, has faced its share of environmental health problems. The area's industrial past has left much vacant land and a lot of contaminated soil, but many urban farmers—now aware of this problem—have subjected their farms to soil treatment and testing.

Inglewood specifically has also long been considered a food desert — an urban neighborhood without consistent access to groceries and fresh produce. In 2022, the local Whole Foods store closed and was replaced by a Save-a-Lot franchise.

Many South Side communities suffer from a lack of green spaces and other places where people can improve their health, says Julia Lippert, Ph.D., who teaches health sciences at DePaul University.

“You can directly map the location of food deserts and food-deprived communities, as well as the rates of diabetes, obesity, and any kind of negative health outcomes you can think of,” Lippert says. “Then add the lack of preventative care sites or health clinics. “All of these things are interconnected.”

It's not just a lack of access to medical services in Inglewood, my friend says, there's also a lack of medical trust in these communities. “They were subjected to medical racism.”

Inglewood, which has high rates of hypertension and high blood pressure, is 90% black.

Englewood farmers did not establish their pharmacies to compete with modern medicine, but to offer alternatives and convenience to neighbors and the farmers themselves. My friend includes information with medical packages about their contents.

Chicago leadership, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, has expressed interest in supporting community gardens, and began the grant program last summer. To date, the program has invested $2 million in 18 new urban agricultural sites.

However, the scale of what any urban farm or similar projects can do is not the scale of the community space it creates. Urban gardens sponsored by local farmers develop connections where people can come together to learn about healthy food and then share it with the rest of the community, Lippert says. “It's not just about (one garden) trying to grow 500 tomatoes, but about having a space where kids can play in the dirt.”