Dr. Douglas Schar Biography

My name is Dr. Douglas Schar and I am an herbalist, botanist, doctor, and health journalist. My specialty is plants, herbs or foods, that make the body strong and healthy. Twenty years ago I became interested in plants used by traditional cultures to increase health, plants that had some miraculous ability to boost vitality and insure wellness. Ok, its a rather unusual interest, but, it fascinated me then and it continues to fascinate me now.

I was intrigued that around the world, people living in different cultures, simultaneously, identified plants that could be used to boost vitality, prevent disease, and or stimulate speedy recovery from illness. Sometimes they were foods made out of plants, sometimes they were medicines made out of plants. But, what they had in common was this peculiar ability to stimulate vitality or restore health. And in many cases, different cultures on different continents identified the same plants as being vitality building, prior to the age of communication. Coincidence? Probably not.

So, I was fascinated and spent twenty years nosing around the subject. And, when you spend twenty years studying "health causing" plants, you learn a few things. I consider myself an expert in the field of plants that can keep you well or get you well. So that's boring old me, plant freak who has spent his life looking for plants that stimulate health.

This website contains all that I have discovered about "stay well" or "get well" plants, and it will contain all my future discoveries. If you want to learn about plants you can use to maintain or regain health, you have found the right website.

Getting down to brass tacks, this website is broken down into two areas: the archives and the features section. The archives is where I have parked all of my prior writings which would include chapters from my PhD thesis, chapters from my books, articles, fact sheets and more. I have written a lot and in the archives you have access to all of my prior research, discoveries, and writings.

The features section is where you will find monthly features on my recent discoveries or fascinations — plants you need to know about. As I float around the globe, I come across plants that appear to have potential in the health game, and I end up researching the hell out of them. I grow the plant in question, process it into food or medicine, and then use it. When I get through with all that, and I feel that I have some useful information to pass on, I write an article.

The website and me have a home. All this experimenting and learning takes place on a small farm 14 miles outside Washington, DC. The farm is where I grow and experiment with all kinds of health stimulating plants. It's kind of like an experimental station — out of control. It's the playground of this mad scientist. I have fields, I have a greenhouse, and I have a commercial kitchen. In the commercial kitchen stuff from the fields and the greenhouse gets turned into health building foods and medicines.

My adventure with plants began at a very early age. At the age of three my grandfather helped me plant my first garden. By the age of four I was writing to my grandmother asking her to send me seeds of a variety of lettuce she grew — a lettuce variety she got from her grandmother. Basically, as soon as I could talk, I talked plants. Specifically, I talked to old people about how to grow things. They seemed to know the deal.

As soon as I could read, I began reading gardening books. Some kids read comics, I read Rodale's Organic Gardening. Growing up in DC, I had the big daddy of all libraries at my disposal, the Library of Congress, and I used it. I read all about the different useful plants that people used for all kinds of purposes.

I went to College in NYC and without a garden I grew vegetables on my fire escape and turned my apartment into an orchid nursery. When I got back from College, I bought a house in DC that had a 40 x 80 lot. Having spent four years in Gotham City, gardenless, I had a lot of pent up garden energy stored up. I went crazy with my city garden. I began collecting useful plants and over stuffed my little city plot. Soon enough, the garden was producing enough food for a family of five.

To pay for my ridiculous garden, I started a gardening business. I designed and installed gardens for people. I got to know the commercial side of the plant world. However, in time, the business became more about managing employees and scoring clients and less and less about plants. I wanted to work with plants, and though this was close, it was not close enough.

As total luck would have it, a local television producer noticed my bizarre garden and asked if I would be interested in hosting a gardening television show. Mass media to my rescue! I was going to get paid to study useful plants and then talk about them! The Urban Gardener was born. I wrote and starred in the show and it was bliss. To get paid to read books at the Library of Congress was a dream come true.

My real interest had always been useful plants — plants that were used as food or medicine. I decided to write a book on "tonics": plants that made people stronger. I spent a year intensely studying the tonic concept and tonic plants from around the world. My first book, "Thirty Plants that Could Save your Life," came into existence. The book was a success, which led me to write another book on the subject.

This led me to attend a medical school in the UK that specialized in herbal medicine. Ultimately, I graduated from the leading college of western herbal medicine, The College of Phytotherapy (UK), with a Diploma in Phytotherapy. After I graduated, I stayed in London. I had a shop that produced and sold disease preventing and health stimulating herbal medicines and a clinic where people were treated with nothing but these botanical remedies.

I wrote more books on the subject, including "The Dictionary of Aphrodisiac Plants," "Dump Your Stress in the Compost Pile," "Backyard Medicine Chest," "Healing Plants of the Bible," "Dictionary of Tonic Plants," and "Echinacea." I also began contributing to Prevention magazine and acting as an advisor to their herbal guides.

Then I started a PhD in Herbal Medicine at the University of Exeter. I had spent 15 years fascinated with tonic herbs — plants that increased health and well being — and decided to spend some years looking even more intensely at this type of plant. In 2000 I returned to Washington, where I took an active role at the Botanical Healing program at the Tai Sophia Institute, teaching history of herbal medicine.

After ten years of struggle, I was finally awarded my PhD. I believe I have the only PhD in tonic herbal medicine in the world. After I got my PhD, I bought a small farm where I have the opportunity to grow tonic plants and make tonic medicines and foods. I am actively working on developing tonic preparations that can be used in commercial farming — substances that can keep animals healthy and thereby avoid the need for antibiotics and other unnatural substances.

So the beat goes on. I continue to study plants that stimulate vitality and well being. However, I am now focused on communicating what I have learned through my website.