Herbs From the Ground Up
Upcoming Short Courses
115 hours, Mondays 9:30-3, April 29th through October 14th with 2 weeks off on 8/19 and 9/2; taught by Larken Bunce, Annie McCleary, and Julie Mitchell. $900, $100 deposit
This apprenticeship class focuses on home herb gardening for the purpose of growing and maintaining one’s own apothecary in accordance with the natural rhythms of the plants and the year.
Students work in a 3-year old garden, learning about soil amendment and seed starting, moving through garden design and co-creating with nature, planting, tending, harvesting,
drying and medicine-making, composting, and ending with root harvest, seed-saving, and putting the garden to bed. Students go on field trips to local farms/gardens and wild-crafting sites of interest to round out local medicine knowledge.
As a true apprenticeship-style learning environment, this course emphasizes learning by doing, spaciousness within experience, and connection with plants, with little didactic time. Students will learn through embodied practice of being a garden steward, wild-crafter and medicine-maker, which is hard work, but also exceptionally fun and rewarding.
Discussions of plant use and lore will occur while we work, weed and harvest, with attention to bioregional plants easily gathered or grown and prepared for self-care. Growing Asian medicinal species and learning about their uses is an additional unique opportunity.