There is an old idea, older than pharmacies and prescriptions, that the plants growing closest to our back doors are the ones we most need. Long before the medicine cabinet, the hedge and the meadow were the medicine cabinet. The nettle by the compost heap, the elder at the boundary, the marigold self-seeding in the cracks; these were the village apothecary, tended by nobody and available to everyone. When we rewild a garden, we are not only making room for pollinators and bi