Wild Medicine Program
Foster a connection to your health, your spirit, the earth, and its rhythms.
Wild Medicine 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
Testimonials
“The Night Garden is a special and wild space, always providing medicine to its visitors through plants, sun, and silence. Emily tends to the herbs which dwell in this garden the way you care for someone you love.
Her patient, integrative, and poetic teaching style creates a safe learning space for all who are interested in healing their wellbeing through nature’s offerings. Here, Emily is always thinking of others’ accommodation needs and makes sure to promote breaks, questions big and small, and community.
In the Night Garden, there is a sense of magic that roots itself within you, forming the belief that you belong where there is wild growth.”
“Emily is generous with her time, wisdom and resources. She is honest, real and kind and truly wants to support others in their learning by sharing the great wealth that she has to share from her own years of learning and experience. Because of her shared wisdom, I felt confident in growing my own herb garden for the first time this year and I have experimented with medicine making with the herbs that grew from the soil that I tend with my own hands. What a gift - there is nothing quite like it.
If you are interested in learning about herbalism and want to connect with the land, plants and amazing humans, please don’t hesitate to join Emily’s program. The spirits of the land are incredible at Osamequin; I think it’s impossible to visit and leave unchanged. This program has been deeply healing to my heart, spirit and nervous system.”
“Every month, I found myself checking my calendar for the next meet up. This cohort gave me something to look forward to in the midst of my busy life. I was pregnant for most of the course, so this was an act of self-care and space for me to connect with Mother Earth and the life growing inside of me (my nervous system thanks you). Emily nourished our cohort with herbal wisdom, forest bathing, harvesting, and time to be in community. Caring for ourselves and the earth should not be a luxury, it should be a constant harmonious way of life.”
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 22: Nettle & Pine / / Learning the Garden, Walking the Path
introduction, seed starting, reawakening the garden, infusions
April 19: Burdock, Dandelion & Valerian / / Spring Offerings
root decoctions, introduction to ethical foraging, supporting spring growth
May 24: Mullein & Comfrey & Plantain / / Softening and Centering
infused oils and salve-making, wound healing & herbal first aid
June 21: St. John’s Wort, Yarrow & Lavender / / Solstice Celebration
infused vinegars and tincture making, introduction to harvest and storage, solstice offerings
July 19: Tulsi, Rosemary & Garlic / / Welcoming High Summer
culinary herbs and food as medicine, garlic harvest, lessons from our pollinators
August 23: Goldenrod, Rosehips, & Elder / / Colors of August
infused honey and syrups, connecting to plant spirit, extracting plant dyes
September 20: Thyme, Hops & Echinacea / / Equinox Blessings
preparing for the season ahead, immune system support, woven nature looms
October 18: Medicinal Mushrooms, Oak & Usnea / / Goodnight Garden
foraging in the autumn woods, processing harvest and storing for winter, putting the garden to rest
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.
