Offered: November 6, 2011, 10am - 4:00pm
Location: Commonweal Garden
Instructor: Rachel Berry

Enjoy a day making herbal potions at Commonweal Garden, and come away with the inspiration and know-how to make your own high quality herbal body care gifts for the winter season.
You will learn how to collect and process herbs, from picking to preservation, as well as basic herbal medicine making skills.  We will focus on plants that are safe and easy to grow in the garden and/or abundant in nearby wild lands. Together as a class, we will make the following herbal products that you can customize to make  holiday gifts:

-Herbal Body Cream
-Herbal Lip Balm
-Herbal Massage Oil

You will learn how to customize each product with various plant-based oils, herbs, and essential oils for therapeutics and fragrance.   After completing the class, you will have:

-two sets of organic herbal skin care products to take home
-the recipes and know-how to make them again and again at home
-basic knowledge of how to make a medicinal oil and salve
-the ability to make great gifts fort hose that appreciate high quality, local and organic products
-a list of resources for getting started at home and expanding your herbal repertoire, including a list of very useful plants that are relatively easy to grow in your backyard.

Course Fees

Class size is limited - register early!

Class fee: $100 per person (includes all materials for two sets of products)
               $90 per person if you bring a friend (and register together)

Instructor: Rachel Berry

Rachel blends her background in community health, women’s health, medicinal herbs, and sustainable living practices to inspire and promote home-scale herbalism.  She created Sierra Botanica, a family herbal body care business in the Sierra Foothills, to offer high quality herbal self-care made with local ingredients. Her training includes years of self-study and practice working with herbs for home remedies; formal training programs with Donna D’Terra, Kathi Keville and Candis Cantin; and studying health and health care practices among traditional healers in Chiapas, Mexico.  She holds a master's degree in Health Psychology and worked many years as university instructor in women’s health and as a public health advocate for women and children. 

Commonweal Garden is familiar ground for Rachel — she lived and worked there for the first several years of its development as the Regenerative Design Institute. In these gardens, she learned to connect more deeply to the natural world, use the local plant life to nourish herself, offer herbal first aid to course participants, and create pure and effective herbal care for her family.

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