Programme Information

What's the alternative?

Grow Your Own Drugs

Day and time to be confirmed BBC TWO

• Programme copy

From ice lollies made from Echinacea to acne gels made from marigold flowers, home-made natural remedies are about to get a makeover as ethnobotanist James Wong reveals how to Grow Your Own Drugs in a new series for BBC Two.

In the series, James uses a delicious mix of gardening, cooking, health and beauty and offers viewers an informative guide to plants. He tells how their beneficial properties may help with minor everyday ailments, from coughs and colds to eczema and insomnia.

Here, James tells Jane Dudley all about his favourite recipes, his upbringing in Malaysia and Singapore, and exactly what an ethnobotanist is.

"An ethnobotanist is basically a scientist that studies how plants are used, so it's kind of a cocktail of anthropology and botany at the same time," reveals James. "It can be anything from trying to recreate or piece together the diet of Stone-Age man to researching traditional medicine to come up with the next wonder drug."

James says he has always been fascinated by how plants are used, "even before I knew the term ethnobotany", and he gained a Masters degree after being taught at both Kew Gardens and the University Of Kent. His inspiration, however, came from his grandmother, who lives in Malaysia where, says James, plant-based medicines and conventional drugs aren't pitted against each other; they're used hand in hand. "I grew up halfway between Malaysia and Singapore and I used to be in Singapore for most of the year, but for about three months I'd be in Malaysia – for Christmas and Chinese New Year, and things like that.

"In Asia, herbal remedies aren't considered hippy and weird or something that's yet to be replaced by synthetic drugs. Today they're as much part and parcel of everyday life as they always have been."

In Grow Your Own Drugs, James shows viewers how to make a variety of remedies, including a cream to soothe insect bites, a hot chocolate to reduce anxiety, a pillow to aid sleep and a head lice treatment. "We look at a whole range of minor everyday ailments," he says, "from athlete's foot to sore throats". Many of James's remedies were tried out by people with these minor ailments, "and although they weren't clinical trials, their feedback was really interesting," he adds.

One of his remedies is a medicinal twist on the age-old comforter of chicken soup to help ease the symptoms of the common cold. "There are loads of plants that are traditionally used for colds and flu. We used a combination of ingredients that have not only been used historically but, also, in some cases, have a scientific basis to help support their traditional use – plants like ginger, which can help reduce inflammation, onions and garlic, which are antiseptic, and, perhaps surprisingly, goji berries."

At the very least, adds James, most of the ingredients in the soup are quite nutrient-rich, and when your immune system is compromised, it can be a good food supplement to take when you are feeling under the weather.

All of James's recipes and remedies featured in the series have been assessed by Professor Liz Williamson, Director Of Pharmacy Practice at the University Of Reading. Her principle role was to advise on the safety of the plants used in James's remedies and, where available, provide scientific evidence to support the historical use and explain how the active ingredients in plants may work: "It was great to work with Liz on this series and to be able to draw on her vast pharmaceutical knowledge," he says.

One of James's favourite remedies in the series is the chilli plasters for muscle sprains. "Chillies contain a substance called capsaicin, which is what makes them spicy, and it's been traditionally used as a mild anaesthetic. It is also the active ingredient in some conventional arthritis creams. A bunch of rugby players tried out my pain-relieving plasters and most of them seemed pretty impressed with the results."

Another favourite is perhaps a rather surprising remedy – a pillow containing ingredients traditionally used to reduce anxiety and aid restful sleep. "It's a relaxing pillow that you stick under your own pillow or near your face when you're in bed and it could help you get to sleep."

And the secret ingredients? "It's just hops and lavender – dried hops and lavender in equal quantities. That's all. It was literally a handful of each, stick it in a pillow and stick it under your head when you go to bed. Even when I was packing it I started to feel really drowsy and ended up having to do four or five takes," he laughs. "The insomniacs who tried it for the programme found it really helped them."

All the ingredients used in the series are readily available in the UK – you can, as the title suggests, grow your own, or many items can be found at your local garden centre, on the shelf in the supermarket or health food shops or online, without too much difficulty.

One of the places James visited to source his ingredients was the West Country. "We went to this great chilli farm in Devon, where they've got several hundred different types of chillies, everything from something you can pop in your mouth and eat, almost like a sweet pepper that has a really low capsaicin content, to the world's spiciest chilli which, just by touching it, you burn your fingers. And if you dry one of those chillies it's actually hotter than US grade pepper spray – you could crowd control with that chilli," he laughs.

For the chilli plasters, he says, they used "probably the hottest chilli you could buy in the supermarket, but still quite a medium-strength one. We went with a Habanero, which is about 300,000 Scoville Units – the units go from zero to 16 million I think, which is pure capsaicin, and one million is the hottest chilli."

The lavender in James's sleeping pillow came from a place where, arguably, the world's best lavender originally came from: Sutton in South London. "We went to a lavender field in Sutton. They've just started recreating it as it once would have been. People think that Provence is the home of lavender but, for centuries, the world's best lavender was believed to come from south London, and nowadays it's enjoying a renaissance.

"So many of the ingredients are easy to grow at home. We make this great lavender bath bomb – it's so impressive when it lands in the water and would make a great present, and takes only 15 minutes to make."

It's these wonderful ingredients from around the UK, combined with James's in-depth knowledge of how to use them, which will, hopefully, inspire and encourage viewers to give it a go themselves, providing, of course, they've sought advice from their GP first: "I'm not against conventional medicine and it's really important you get yourself diagnosed by a doctor before trying natural remedies," says James, "but for these kinds of everyday ailments, I think they can be a useful adjunct to over-the-counter drugs."