Herb School for your Wild Heart

 

Wake Robin Trillium (Trillium erectum), a precious spring ephemeral

Within you is a remembrance of being participant in the natural world. This part of you remembers walking barefoot, the damp soil beneath your feet, the cool creek dancing over your toes and lapping at your calves. This quiet memory recalls sitting beneath the luxurious canopy of a towering oak on a warm summer's day and appreciating the company. This instinctual memory enlivens, as you nimbly pluck pungent leaves from bee balm and yarrow and dig the aromatic roots of sassafras and sarsaparilla. Perhaps you personally recall such memories, perhaps you can't recall them at all. Either way, I believe, as living beings in this wild world, such memories exist in our bones, in our DNA; they are inherent in the ancestral knowledge we carry with us. Even if today our lives feel domesticated, our hearts remain wild. They still pound when we step to the edge of a cliff, swell at the sight of a beautiful vista, or warm in the presence of a doe and her fawn.

Processing Yarrow to make tincture

We need the wild for health, happiness, wholeness. More than ever, we are discontent, anxious, and lonely. Heart disease, depression, and obesity are on the rise. There are myriad factors that contribute to this decline in human health. I believe a driving force is our separation from the natural world. For most of human history, we lived in close relation with the natural world. Not only did we spend more time outside, but we gathered or grew our own food and medicine, and harvested plants for cordage, fiber, and building materials. When we needed to go somewhere, we walked. We interacted with other species - perhaps birdsong was our backdrop, or we tracked and learned the habits of an animal we hunted, maybe we tended livestock. We paid attention because reading the land provided insight (and there was no GPS). This sort of lifestyle also required community. We learned skills from each other, we relied on each other, we shared stories and played together.

Barefoot walking with guest teacher Barefoot Ken

Make no mistake, our lives remain intertwined with the natural world. Our food is still cultivated someplace by someone, we sleep at night and are wakeful at day, and weather still impacts our lives. However, we spend a lot of time sitting in front of screens, communicating via screens, feeding on-screen life. For many of us, direct participation with the natural world is not necessary for survival. Although it is essential to our vitality, our happiness, our love for life.

Rejoicing in homegrown medicinal herbs

This is why each and every one of us could benefit from herb school. Sure, I've got a vested interest - but hear me out. An in-person herbal medicine program that's rooted in place will get you OUTSIDE. With the plants. With people. In the company of critters. It will teach you how to grow your own food and medicine. You'll come to know place. You will become part of place, and place will become part of you. You'll know what plants you can turn to as allies to support your health, your family's health, and the health of your community. You don't have to want a career in herbalism, nor wish to live in a hobbit hole deep in the woods. If you want health, well-being, wholeness, then herb school is for you!

Spending time with the plants, getting to know them in the place in which they live - and you live too - is medicine in and of itself. Herbal medicine is stitched to the whole of the wild world, and in learning it and practicing it, you, too, will be stitched to the whole of the wild world. Herbalism will feed your wild heart.  

This is why I offer the Plant and Place Immersion, a four-month in-person bioregional herbal medicine program. Not just to teach herbal medicine, but to foster kinship with the natural world. This kinship is imperative for our health, our communities, and our planet.

The Plant and Place Immersion starts soon! Learn more about this journey with the plants below! 

 Plant and Place Immersion 2026

Meet the plants.

Through plant-sits, we'll slow down, examine what makes each plant morphologically unique, how the leaves feel when crushed, what scent they emanate, how they taste. This is what we call organoleptic knowledge, aka sensory knowledge. Included in our sensory knowledge is the imaginal, those sensations, feelings, thoughts, and memories that arise -it's like swapping stories with a plant. Sensory knowledge is how people came to know plants' properties before we had labs to identify constituents. To work with the plants, one had to know them as individuals, one had to create relationship. This is our foundation. 

Learn how to confidently identify plants and gain knowledge of place.

Learn basic botany and how to use a key to identify plants. Plants do not grow in isolation. Once you begin looking closely, subtleties become apparent. Individuals stand out in the green landscape. You'll notice when plants bloom, in what habitats they grow, and in the company of what other plants. Plants are not a microcosm. They root in the earth, absorb nutrients and water, and transform sunshine into food. Insects and animals visit them for food and shelter and, surely, you'll meet them too in your sit spot. This leads to the next point! 

Cultivate relationship to place.

Every participant is encouraged to find a sit spot, a place in nature to sit, turn on the senses, and notice. Through this slowing down and observation, you'll come to know place as our ancestors did. We can have all the facts in the world about the place in which we live, but we must spend time in place and allow space for communion, communication, to create relationship. This is way easier than it sounds. Just sit and be present.

Ethically and safely harvest plants for food and medicine.

You'll learn how to harvest plants through practices that benefit both you and the plants. We do not take the plants for our own use. Rather we ask that we may work with them, harvest only what we need, and give thanks. We can give thanks in a variety of ways - plant nearby seeds, sprinkle water, clear competing invasive plants, or just say thank you! The plants give and we give back. This is practicing reciprocity.

Prepare plants as food and herbal medicine.

Participants learn how to incorporate wild harvested and homegrown plants into delicious meals and easy healthy snacks. You'll learn hands-on how to prepare herbal tinctures, infusions and decoctions, infused oils and salves, herbal vinegars and more. By preparing plants as food and medicine, we create relationship with them and the place in which they grew. As we consume them, they nourish us and contribute to our physiology. We quite literally become inseparable. 

Discover how herbs benefit the human body.

I'll share the ways in we can work with plants to balance various imbalances within the human body. We'll monograph the herbs that we meet, by creating detailed medicinal profiles. These profiles will contain both scientific knowledge and traditional ways of knowing. Every participant will finish the program with a materia medica - a collection of plant monographs - to reference for a lifetime. Participants will have the skills to expand their materia medicas as they meet new plants.

Methods for connecting with plants and place.

Forest bathing, barefoot walking, journaling, and gardening will further inspire your path to connection with the natural world and her green inhabitants. Guest teachers will provide a variety of insights from their paths. The ways in which we find connection are varied and personal. Through the Immersion, you are sure to find those ways which most resonate with you!

Enjoy a community of like-minded earth-centered folks.

With your fellow participants you'll revel in the natural world and make connections in unexpected ways. Intentionally built into the curriculum is time to share stories and insights. We have much to learn from one another!

This season, get outside, meet the plants, commune with place, and nourish your wild heart! The Plant and Place Immersion takes place at the School of Plant and Place Connection in Milford, Pa. The program runs May through August. Enjoy 10 in-person full-day sessions and 8 virtual classes. Two bonus seasonal plant walks bookend the experience - the first one is in April! Join us for the Plant and Place Immersion by visiting: Immersion

Our classroom at the School of Plant and Place Connection