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Fat Crush: Meghan Henshaw and Julia Orquera Bianco
Every once in a while, we come across a project that makes our heart skip a beat.
It’s the kind of project that meets us at the intersection of plants, books, and handmade things. It’s the place we are the most giddy, and the place we drool and purrrrr.
This project is deeply considered, well researched, and is a work of art. It stems from old archives, from gardens, from herbalists and artists.
When this kind of convergence occurs, it’s like the stars aligning- we pay attention. These are hybrid times, and we need art to symbolize and enact this fact in order to integrate what was, what is and what is to be.
Photo: Julia Warner of Cereal Box Studios
This month we’re crushing HARD on Meghan Henshaw and Julia Orquera Bianco, and their newly released, limited-edition herbal zine, Flora’s Daughters: Seven Plants Through the Lens of Eclectic Medicine, Contemporary Herbalism, and Botanical Illustration.
Created as part of their 2025 Curtis Gates Lloyd Fellowships, this small-batch zine, designed and published by Julia Warner of Cereal Box Studios, brings together art, research, and storytelling in a way that feels both reverent and usable. Across roughly 45 pages, it features concise monographs on seven medicinal plants of the Ohio River Valley, including motherwort, valerian, calendula, tulsi, and tobacco.
Each chapter pairs original cyanotype and watercolor illustrations with grounded explorations of plant actions, historical and contemporary uses, cultivation, sustainability, and instructions for making herbal preparations you can actually use. It’s practical, place-based herbalism with a strong visual backbone and a clear point of view.
At the heart of the project is the Lloyd Library and its archive from the Eclectic Medical Institute, a 19th-century school that championed plant-based medicine long before it was mainstream. Flora’s Daughters brings this under-recognized lineage forward with care, making historical knowledge accessible without flattening its depth.
Just as importantly, the zine centers the work of female botanists and botanical illustrators, honoring women as keepers, interpreters, and artists of plant knowledge across generations.
At the heart of Flora’s Daughters
Meghan Henshaw, a herbalist, educator, and field researcher whose work is deeply rooted in place. Meghan harvests these plants annually from an urban community garden and outdoor classroom in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood, where she also blends them into a custom seed mix designed to help others grow medicinal herbs in their own green spaces. Her approach bridges historical research and lived practice, making plant knowledge feel both grounded and immediately usable.
Alongside her is Julia Orquera Bianco, whose cyanotype and watercolor illustrations bring the zine to life. Julia’s practice explores memory, migration, and belonging, and during her time at the Lloyd she researched historical nature printing methods to inform her visual work. The result is artwork that feels archival and contemporary at once, honoring botanical illustration traditions while allowing them to re-emerge through a modern lens.
The result is a zine that feels like both an artifact and a resource. Something you’ll reference, return to, dog-ear, and keep close.
The zine is available now in limited quantities, and it’s very much the kind of thing that won’t stay around forever.