Offered: Septmeber 19, 10:00 – 5:00
Location: Commonweal Garden
Instructor: Rachel Berry

Spend a day in the garden making your own nourishing remedies for the body.  This is an essential skill for those who want to make high quality body care, save money, reduce exposure and reliance on chemicals, and connect more deeply with the plants around them.

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:

• Luscious Lotion: Learn the alchemy of making lotion from water, oil, and beeswax.  We’ll infuse it with the goodness skin-nourishing herbs from the garden.
• Skin Salve: a great multi-purpose salve that helps heal dry hands, cuts, scrapes and abrasions.  A great remedy for those who work hard with their hands, or are prone to scrapes and cuts.
• Herbal Massage Oil: Nourish your skin with organic oils infused with garden herbs.  Learn this simple art to make custom massage oil blends for yourself and your others.
• Lip Balm: make a lip balm for 100% locally sourced materials to soothe and heal dry, chapped lips.

You will leave with a set of these herbal products to take home (a $35+ value), as well the recipes and know-how to make them again and again. You will also receive tips on planting your own herbal medicine garden at home.

Find out more about RDI's Re-Skilling Series!

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 Backyard Botanics, 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.

Course Fees

Class size is limited - register early! Registration ends Septemeber 10.

$85 early bird registration by August 20
$95 registration by September 10
Register now