Unearthing Herbal Wisdom: Caring for Earth, Caring for Self
Foster a connection to your health, your spirit, the earth, and its rhythms.
Unearthing Herbal Wisdom is an an in-person, community-based opportunity to connect with the natural world and learn how to incorporate culinary and medicinal herbs, wild plants, mushrooms, and tree magic into our daily lives. This 8-session course runs from March through October, and it is focused on building knowledge around working with plants in meaningful and practical ways, following the garden and the forest through the seasons, and learning hands-on skills, permaculture principals, and nature connection practices.
Take Your Health into Your Own Hands
What to Expect
Between March and October, spend one day per month connecting with plants, learning to grow a medicine garden at home to help keep yourself and your friends and family well cared for, and discover ways to transform plants into medicines and handcrafts in close community.
At our monthly gatherings, we will spend time growing and tending to plants in the garden, making medicines and experimenting with plants to support our physical, mental, spiritual and energetic well-being, foraging through the woods and fields, and connecting quietly to ourselves and to the earth. This is an opportunity to grow plants from seed, craft a personalized healing journey, make and use safe and effective herbal medicines, and transform plants into handcraft in the company of a small group of supportive folks. It’s a chance to celebrate the earth’s movement, and to invest in wildness, intuition, and joy.
This course is not intended to teach you to be a practicing herbalist, but instead will be a path to taking better care of yourself and others simply and naturally, with sustainable practices that give back to the earth. With a focus on permaculture, meditative and creative connection to earth, nourishing the body intentionally and healthfully, and ethical foraging and wildcrafting, we will be empowered to nurture ourselves while engaging thoughtfully and supportively as a community.
Our days will be spent outdoors from 10 am to 3:30 pm, and each gathering will be dictated by the gifts of the season. In the early spring, expect to discuss sowing seeds and designing a garden, and begin growing your own plants to take home and care for over the course of our time together. We will begin our journey into medicine making with infused vinegars, syrups, and herbal smoke blends. Late spring and summer will involve planting and harvesting, creating infusions, tinctures, oils, and salves, medicinal eating, solstice celebrations, permaculture practices, and more. In autumn we will dig roots, carefully process herbs to create our own at-home apothecaries, and learn how best to prepare ourselves and our gardens for the winter months.
Gatherings will revolve around specific themes and plants. We will always hone in on a few specific in-season plants to get to know them well, but will have ample opportunity to investigate and spend time with a variety of species. In addition to learning about growing plants, making medicines, and sustaining yourself and your family, expect monthly rituals, opportunities for quiet reflection, and grounding practices like meditation, journaling, art making, and offerings of gratitude to the land.
Provisional Monthly Schedule (subject to change)
March 30: Nettle & Pine / / Learning the Garden, Walking the Path
introduction, seed starting, reawakening the garden, infusions
April 20: Burdock, Dandelion & Valerian / / Spring Offerings
root decoctions, introduction to ethical foraging, supporting spring growth
May 19*: Rose & Chamomile & Yarrow / / Softening and Centering
infused vinegars and food as medicine, introduction to planting and harvesting (*note: this class falls on a Sunday, rather than a Saturday)
June 22: St. John’s Wort, Arnica, Calendula & Lavender / / Solstice Celebration
infused oils and salve-making, wound healing, solstice offerings
July 20: Tulsi & Marshmallow & Lemon Balm / / Welcoming High Summer
tincture making, introduction to processing for storage, lessons from our pollinators
August 24: Thyme & Elder & Anise Hyssop / / Colors of August
infused honey and syrups, connecting to plant spirit, extracting plant dyes
September 21: Mint & Hops & Goldenrod / / Equinox Blessings
preparing for the season ahead, smoke blends and incense, leaf carving
October 19: Ashwagandha, Horseradish & Culinaries / / Goodnight Garden
harvesting and processing roots, fire cider, autumn offerings, broom weaving
Optional Make-up Days: June 29, July 27, October 26
About your Guide
My name is Emily Shapiro, and I am a farmer, herbalist, healer, and educator based in Providence, RI and Seekonk, MA. I hail from a family of gardeners, mystics and herbalists in the Jewish and Buddhist traditions, and I founded The Night Garden in 2020 in the hopes of cultivating a farm project that heals and enriches both the community I serve along with the soil and ecosystem. I hold Level I and Level II certificates from Farmacy Herbs in Providence, and have served as a teacher, faculty member at RISD, tarot reader and herbal healer for the past decade.
With reverence for the land on which the Night Garden is situated, I have created a farm committed to supporting and cultivating a connection to plants and to the earth, and I grow over 35 species of herbs, vegetables, and flowers without chemicals to support not only those that benefit from the use of the plants, but to support the planet as well. The garden and surrounding woods help and heal me often, and I am so excited to offer Unearthing Herbal Wisdom as an opportunity to share these spaces and their healing powers with others. I am happy and hopeful about how we (the garden and I) can improve and serve and heal our community and our little plot of earth.
Why Participate?
For me, connecting deeply to the earth is an integral part of wellness. It is my belief that establishing relationships with our own bodies is of the utmost importance, and gratefully using plants to aid and support that relationship can be a gentle and empowering tool in fostering physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Unearthing Herbal Wisdom is an opportunity to share what I have learned from the Night Garden and the surrounding woods and fields with this loving community in the hopes of connecting us all more deeply to the earth as an integral part of wellness.
More important than “curing” or “treating” any illnesses or ailments, herbs can help prevent them, providing important nutrients, balancing your nervous system, bolstering your body’s immune response, encouraging regular hormone production, and supporting your psychological and emotional wellbeing. When we consume medicinal plants, our bodies become stronger, more balanced, and more resilient.
