As a child, Tunisia Wales loved stealing flowers from her neighbour’s yard in Boaz Island, Sandys.

The young Ms Wales would run back to her own yard with pilfered Easter lilies and try unsuccessfully to plant them.

She knew the jig was up when the neighbour knocked on the door one day.

“Instead of scolding me she took me over to her garden and showed me how to dig up the lily bulbs,” she said. “Then, we planted them in my own yard. I will never forget that. She saw my interest.”

The neighbour’s kindness helped to trigger Ms Wales’s lifelong passion for growing things.

Now the 43-year-old wants to open a store for her business, B-Rooted, selling fresh fruits and vegetables, equipment to garden in small spaces, and homemade ointments, salves and spices. First though, she has to find the right location. She needs somewhere with fencing, room for soil storage and an area to sell her produce and medicinal products. So far, she has looked at many different properties, but has not found the right one.

“That is the hardest undertaking,” she said. “I am in talks with someone about purchasing their business. Before I can get a loan though, I need to have a building.”

One of her goals is to offer gardening classes and workshops.

“There used to be a garden in every yard,” she said. “We are not taught life any more. We are not taught to be self sustaining. Instead, we are taught to be dependent.”

In a time of rocketing food prices, she wants to see more community initiatives aimed at strengthening food security.

“There are fields and plots of land in every parish that could be put to work growing food for Bermuda residents,” she said. “It is hard here. We are paying so much money for food. When I go in the store and spend $100, I can barely get a bag of groceries. I remember when I could buy a chocolate bar for 55 cents.”

Gardening is full of problem solving. In her own garden in Sandys she had to build raised beds because the soil consisted of backfill and was thin. Now she grows many different vegetables and herbs including carrots, broccoli, arugula, purslane and basil.

“I am in my garden all day and all night,” she said. “It is wonderful to be out there. I am at the point where my gardening space is enlarged and I still crave more.”

She said home-grown fruits and vegetables taste and smell better than store bought, and have better nutritional value.

Every season has its challenges. At this time of year, she is finding it hardest to grow artichokes.

“Carrots are hit or miss and onions are a seasonal thing,” she said.

She is concerned that traditional Bermuda onions have disappeared because people have stopped growing them.

“There is no such thing as a Bermuda onion any more,” she said. However, she said other types of onions do well here once they have had a chance to adjust to the climate.

While she looks for a permanent home for B-Rooted, Ms Wales is building up her stock of traditional remedies, some of which have to age for six to eight months for full potency. She uses ingredients she has grown herself.

For example, one of her creations is an antibiotic ointment concocted from yarrow, purslane, lavender and plantain.

“It is good for eczema, insect bites, rashes, cuts, and abrasions,” she said. “It is excellent. I also have digestive bitters, which are plants that are good for digestion or for people with a hangover. Cayenne peppers are good for stripping mucus away.”

Ms Wales firmly believes that food is medicine.

“My mother was Muslim and later became Seventh-day Adventist, like my father,” she said. “She did not eat any meat, particularly not pork or shellfish. We didn’t eat these things either so as not to upset her. To this day I have had meat, but never pork or shellfish. If we learn to eat properly, we will be healthy.”

When she was little her father would encourage her and her siblings to eat garlic as the seasons changed.

“I never had a cold,” she said. “My father is 88 years old. You would think he was in his fifties. He lives in the United States and is still getting up on roofs to fix shingles.”

She learnt a lot about traditional medicine while working as a caregiver for the elderly for many years. Her clients would tell her the home remedies people used when they were young. She also read a lot of books and watched YouTube videos.

She saw the power of alternative medicine first hand when one of her clients developed pancreatic cancer.

“He went into Agape House and doctors took him off all medications,” Ms Wales said. “He was given a short time left to live. I put him on little shots of turmeric. Turmeric kills cancer cells.”

“He was able to go home,” Ms Wales said. “He wasn’t young; he was 96. Red Cross nurses came around and said his blood pressure was better than theirs.”

Four years ago, she left nursing.

“I was getting tired of watching my clients pass away,” she said. “Professionally, you are not supposed to get too connected, but how can you not?”

After the death of her last client she started teaching gardening at the Bermuda Institute and also worked at places such as Aberfeldy and Brighton Nurseries.

“That was my first learning curve,” she said.