How to Build an Autumn Home Apothecary
Updated: Sep 23
What I'm gathering, making and keeping close as we move into the colder months
September always carries the air of a little second beginning to me.
My boys have just gone back to school and preschool, the house suddenly becomes strangely quiet after weeks of summer noise, and outside there is that almost imperceptible shift happening too. The mornings are cooler. The light is changing. The hedgerows that were frothy with elderflower only a few months ago are now heavy with dark berries, and the first leaves are beginning to gather at their feet.
While January has never particularly inspired me to reinvent myself - I'm much more of a Spring Equinox starts-the-year kinda girl - September always makes me want to naturally gather things in.
And apparently I've been doing exactly that.
When I looked around the kitchen this week, I realised that our autumn home apothecary is already beginning to take shape. There are elderberries tucked into the freezer from our walks. We've made elderberry syrup. A rather magnificent jar of fire cider is quietly infusing in the cupboard, getting stronger and more fiery by the day. There are herbs still growing outside, honey in the kitchen and, of course, the essential oils I work with and love daily.
None of it arrived as part of a carefully planned shopping list, but has accumulated slowly as the season has changed, which is perhaps exactly how a home apothecary should be built.
Because despite what beautiful photographs of shelves lined with amber bottles might have us believe, I don't think a useful home apothecary is about owning very much at all. It's about knowing a little more about the things you do have: what they're useful for, how to prepare them, when you might reach for them and, just as importantly, when you wouldn't.
So if you've been intrigued by the idea of building one but have absolutely no idea where to begin, come and have a look inside mine.
You may be surprised by how much of it you already have.
Somewhere between the kitchen and the garden
When I talk about a home apothecary, I'm not talking about recreating a herbal dispensary at home.
I'm not a herbalist, and I'm not trying to become one, I think it's important to be clear about that. My own professional background is in medicine and aromatherapy, which probably explains why I'm so fascinated by the space where traditional knowledge and modern science meet.
I want to know how something has been used, but I also want to know what might be happening physiologically, which constituents we're interested in, whether anybody has actually studied it, how good that evidence is and where its limitations lie. Equally, I don't think the absence of a large randomised controlled trial automatically makes generations of traditional knowledge uninteresting or without value.
For me, that's where so much of the fascination lies.
Knowing when elderberries are ripe. Discovering that the thyme growing outside has a history far beyond our roast potatoes. Understanding why I might inhale an essential oil rather than apply it to my skin, or why the Latin name on an essential-oil bottle can sometimes matter enormously.
Some of the things in my home apothecary have useful evidence behind them. Some have generations of traditional use that make me want to understand them better. Some simply soothe, comfort or make being poorly a little more bearable.
There is room for all of those things.
But, there is also value in knowing the difference.
Let the season contribute too
One of my favourite things about building a home apothecary this way is that the season gets a say in what goes into it.
Mine is already carrying quite a lot of late summer with it.
The elderberries arrived pretty darn early here this year, as I've written about before, so rather than hanging heavily in the hedgerows now, most of mine are tucked into the freezer. Some became syrup straight away, and the rest were simply frozen while they were abundant, ready for whatever I decided to make with them later.
And that's often how my home apothecary grows.
Something appears in abundance and I gather or preserve a little while it's there. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to make with it; sometimes freezing, drying or infusing it buys me a little more time to decide.
There are elderflowers preserved from earlier in the year, plantain and calendula infusing into oils, and herbs still growing outside. Now apples and rosehips are beginning to take their turn.
You certainly don't need to forage for any of this either. The season might contribute through a pot of thyme outside the back door, rosemary growing enthusiastically in the garden, apples from somebody else's overflowing tree, or simply the herbs and produce that become abundant and inexpensive at this time of year.
For me, it's less about having a prescribed collection of medicinal plants and more about learning to notice what is around us and what we can sensibly do with it.
You begin recognising the elder tree before its flowers arrive. You know where the plantain grows on your usual walk. You notice when the blackberries are early, when the rosehips begin turning red, when the lavender needs cutting back.
And you begin to understand that preserving is part of this too. Freezing a few handfuls of berries when they're abundant might not look quite as romantic as a row of amber apothecary bottles, but it means the season can continue feeding into what we make long after that particular harvest has passed.
Slowly, the landscape around you becomes less anonymous.
And I truly believe that's as valuable as anything we eventually put into a jar.
So, what are we actually going to make?
This is the bit I always want to know when I read something about building a home apothecary: what is actually going to be in it?
I'm starting with a handful of preparations that do different jobs, use different ways of working with plants and aromatics, and are realistic enough to make in an ordinary kitchen. Some are already underway; others I'll be making and sharing here over the next few weeks.
Elderberry syrup is already in the fridge, made from some of those early berries before the rest disappeared into the freezer. If you have elderberries tucked away too, I've already shared three of my favourite ways to use elderberries, including my elderberry syrup recipe. I'll keep some as syrup, but I'm also going to turn a batch into elderberry gummies. They're a useful way of taking something we've already made and turning it into a different format - particularly when there are children in the house and enthusiasm for a spoonful of syrup isn't always guaranteed.
My fire cider is already quietly infusing too. If you missed the beginning, you can make my fire cider here - it's apple cider vinegar packed with ginger, garlic, chilli, citrus and herbs. I made this batch back in August, so the next time you see it we'll be at the rather satisfying part - straining out all those fiery ingredients, adding honey to balance the finished infusion, bottling it, and looking at how I actually use it once it's earned its place in the autumn cupboard.
Then we'll move into something much closer to my own particular corner of the apothecary and make a properly formulated aromatic chest balm. I don't want this to be coconut oil with a collection of “breathing oils” thrown into it. We'll look at which essential oils actually make sense, their chemistry, the concentration, who we're making it for and why each ingredient has earned its place.
I'm also going to explore a thyme respiratory oxymel. If you've never heard of an oxymel before, it's a traditional preparation made with honey and vinegar - wonderfully old-apothecary sounding, but remarkably straightforward to make. Thyme has a particularly interesting history of respiratory use, so we'll look at both that tradition and what the modern evidence can actually tell us.
For the dry, scratchy, irritating end of the cough spectrum, I want to make herbal honey throat pastilles instead. Apart from being a rather lovely old household preparation to bring back into the kitchen, they give us an opportunity to explore something genuinely useful: why we might not want exactly the same preparation for every kind of cough or irritated throat.
And finally, we'll make a respiratory aromatherapy inhaler. It's probably going to be the smallest thing in the whole apothecary, but it gives us a chance to look at one of my favourite parts of aromatherapy - how the route of use changes the way we formulate, and why an inhaler isn't simply a chest-balm blend transferred onto a wick.
So, over the next few weeks, we'll end up with a syrup and gummies, an infused vinegar, an oxymel, pastilles, a balm and an inhaler - each made for a reason, and each teaching us something slightly different along the way.
I'll add the recipes and formulations here as I make, test and publish them, so this page can gradually become the place to come back to whenever you want to build your own.
Start in the kitchen
Before you buy anything, have a look in the kitchen.
A surprising amount of what we'll be using over the next few weeks is probably already there. Honey, apple cider vinegar, ginger, garlic, lemon and perhaps a jar of dried thyme aren't particularly exotic ingredients, but between them they form the beginnings of several of the preparations we're going to make.
Honey is one of the most useful things to have around. It will appear in our elderberry syrup, finish the fire cider once it's strained, form one half of our oxymel and, depending on where the formulation takes us, may well find its way into the throat pastilles too.
I generally choose a good-quality raw honey for my home apothecary preparations. Raw honey hasn't been subjected to the same degree of heat processing as many standard commercial honeys, so more of its naturally occurring enzymes and other heat-sensitive components are retained.
Honey itself also has evidence for helping to relieve acute cough symptoms in people over the age of one - a lovely example of an ordinary household ingredient whose traditional use has some modern evidence sitting behind it. That evidence isn't specific to raw honey, so I wouldn't suggest that ordinary honey has no value; raw is simply what I prefer to reach for when I'm choosing a jar specifically for preparations like these.
Apple cider vinegar is another ingredient doing several jobs. My fire cider is already extracting into it, and we'll use it again when we explore oxymels: traditional preparations that combine vinegar and honey with herbs.
Then there are the things we tend to think of as food rather than apothecary ingredients. Thyme is perhaps the one I'm most interested in this autumn. Thymus vulgaris has a long history of respiratory use, particularly around productive coughs, and its traditional medicinal use is recognised by the European Medicines Agency. We'll come back to the evidence - and its limitations - when we make our oxymel rather than trying to turn the kitchen cupboard into a pharmacology lesson here.
Ginger, garlic, citrus and warming spices will crop up too, as they already have in the fire cider and elderberry syrup.
That's one of the things I want this series to show. Building a home apothecary doesn't necessarily begin with unfamiliar herbs arriving through the post. But perhaps instead, sometimes looking at something you've cooked with for years and becoming curious about it in a completely different way.
So for now, don't worry about assembling an enormous collection. Have a rummage through the cupboards, see what's already there, and perhaps make sure you have a good jar of honey, apple cider vinegar and some thyme.
We're already surprisingly well on our way.
Then comes the aromatherapy
Essential oils have become part of my everyday life, so naturally they have a place in my home apothecary too.
For our autumn preparations, I'm particularly interested in oils traditionally associated with the respiratory system, but I want to go a little deeper than another list of “the best essential oils for colds”. Which oil we choose, its chemistry, who we're making something for, how much we use and - importantly - how we're going to use it all matter.
Our aromatic chest balm and respiratory inhaler will be a lovely way to explore this. Although they may share some of the same essential oils, they won't simply be the same blend in different packaging.
A balm sits on the skin and releases its aromatic compounds gradually over time, while a personal inhaler gives us a much shorter, more concentrated and controllable aromatic exposure. How we're going to use an essential oil - on the skin or close to the nose, briefly or over several hours - changes how I think about the formulation.
That's the side of aromatherapy I particularly love: moving beyond bottles with lists of ailments attached and beginning to understand what we're actually working with.
When we make both preparations, I'll explain what I've chosen and why, how I've formulated them, and how that changes when we're making something for different members of the family.
A few useful making ingredients
Beyond the things growing outside and sitting in the kitchen cupboard, there are a handful of ingredients and bits of equipment that make home apothecary making considerably easier.
For topical preparations, I keep carrier oils such as jojoba or sweet almond, along with beeswax for turning oils into balms and salves. I often have shea and mango butter around too, although whether we use it in our chest balm will depend on the formulation we eventually settle on.
A digital scale is one of the few pieces of equipment I genuinely think is worth having, particularly once we move into formulations where proportions and concentrations matter. Otherwise, most of what we'll use is wonderfully ordinary: clean glass jars, a small saucepan (double boiler is great if you have one), bowls, spoons, a fine sieve or muslin, small bottles or pots and some baking parchment when we make the pastilles.
I'll also be using personal aromatherapy inhaler tubes for our respiratory inhaler. They're inexpensive little tubes containing an absorbent wick that holds the essential oils, and if you made my late-summer allergy inhaler with me you'll already know how useful I find them.
And labels.
Always labels.
There is a particular confidence with which I put an unlabelled jar in a cupboard believing I'll obviously remember what it is that has now been disproved enough times that I really should know better.
You don't need to go out and buy a matching collection of apothecary equipment before you begin either. Use the jars you already have and add the specialist bits as you actually need them.
My weakness for amber glass jars notwithstanding. They are not medically necessary.
What about “boosting immunity”?
Cold and flu season inevitably brings an avalanche of products promising to “boost” our immune systems, and with two children in school and preschool bringing home whatever happens to be circulating that week, I completely understand the appeal.
But from a medical perspective, “boosting” the immune system isn't really a useful goal. Our immune system is an extraordinarily complex and carefully regulated network of responses, and more activity isn't automatically better.
So when the inevitable autumn cold arrives in our house, I'm much less interested in trying to “boost” anything than I am in supporting what the body is already doing and making everyone a little more comfortable while it does it.
Can we soothe an irritated throat? Can we make a blocked nose feel a little less miserable? Are we drinking enough? Can we make it easier to rest and sleep? And is this something that can reasonably be cared for at home, or is there a reason I'd want medical advice?
Those questions feel far more useful to me.
We will get coughs and colds. The apothecary is simply one of the ways I care for us when we do.
There is room for the medicine cabinet too
Alongside the elderberry syrup, herbs and essential oils in our house you'll find a thermometer, paracetamol and ibuprofen when appropriate, and all the ordinary things a family reaches for when somebody feels rotten.
I've never understood why natural wellbeing and conventional medicine are so often presented as though we have to choose between the two.
We don't.
A spoonful of honey can be useful for a cough and a child can still need medical assessment. A beautifully aromatic chest balm might make bedtime feel considerably nicer without treating the respiratory infection underneath it. We can be fascinated by traditional plant knowledge while recognising the enormous value of modern medicine.
Sometimes the job of something in the home apothecary is simply to soothe and I think we underestimate that. For most uncomplicated coughs and colds, much of conventional care is supportive too - easing symptoms, keeping comfortable, resting, drinking plenty and allowing the body to recover.
So “it only soothes” isn't necessarily a criticism.
There is something deeply comforting about somebody making you a warm drink, rubbing something beautifully aromatic onto your chest, bringing you a blanket and telling you to go back to bed. Not every useful thing we do when somebody is unwell has to alter the underlying disease process to have value.
Natural wellbeing doesn't need to exist in opposition to conventional medicine.
For me, the interesting place has always been where good evidence, traditional knowledge, practical experience and ordinary human care can sit alongside one another.
Build your autumn home apothecary alongside mine
So this is where we're starting.
Some of these preparations are already sitting in my kitchen; others we'll make together over the coming weeks. As each new recipe is formulated, tested and published, I'll add it here so this page gradually becomes a useful place to come back to throughout autumn.
Already in the apothecary
Elderberry syrup + three ways with elderberries
This year's elderberries arrived particularly early, so plenty are already safely tucked into my freezer. If you have some stored away too, you can find three of my favourite ways to use elderberries here, including my elderberry syrup.
Fire cider
Our fiery apple cider vinegar infusion is already doing its thing in the cupboard. You can make my fire cider here, and I'll be sharing the next stage soon: straining it, adding the raw honey, bottling it and, most importantly, actually using it.
Coming into the apothecary
A practical way to turn some of our existing elderberry syrup into another format - particularly handy when there are children in the house.
Aromatic respiratory chest balm
A properly formulated aromatic balm where we'll look at the essential oils, concentration, route of use and who we're making it for.
A wonderfully old-fashioned but surprisingly simple preparation of herbs, vinegar and honey, built around thyme and its long history of respiratory use.
Herbal honey throat pastilles
Something soothing for the dry, scratchy, irritated end of things, while bringing another lovely old household preparation back into the kitchen.
Respiratory aromatherapy inhaler
Tiny, portable and a chance to explore why the way we use an essential oil changes the way we formulate with it.
You certainly don't have to make everything.
Choose the things that make sense for your household, use what you already have and let your own season contribute. Perhaps you're starting with nothing more than a jar of raw honey and the thyme growing outside. Perhaps, like me, your freezer is full of elderberries. Perhaps you've been growing calendula all summer and have been wondering what on earth to do with it.
Start there.
A useful home apothecary isn't built in an afternoon. It grows as you learn, make things, use them and discover what actually earns a place in your household.
Mine certainly has.
And over the next few weeks, we'll add a few more things to it together.
A little note on safety
Everything I share as part of the home apothecary sits within sensible self-care rather than in place of medical assessment or treatment when it's needed. Each recipe will include its own relevant safety information, because the considerations for an elderberry preparation are obviously rather different from those for an essential-oil formulation.
Honey isn't suitable for babies under 12 months. Essential oils need to be selected, diluted and used appropriately for the individual, particularly around babies and children, during pregnancy and where certain medical conditions are present. Anything gathered from the wild needs to be positively identified and prepared appropriately.
And if somebody is significantly unwell, struggling to breathe, becoming dehydrated, deteriorating or simply giving you that feeling of this isn't right, that's the point to look beyond the apothecary and seek appropriate medical advice.
Follow the Autumn Home Apothecary
I'll be sharing each new preparation in my weekly Subtle Medicine letters as we make our way through autumn. If you'd like the recipes, formulations and seasonal notes to arrive in your inbox, you can join me here.
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