Grow a Medicinal Garden

Join local garden coach and herbalist, Katie Vincent of Tending Alive, in the food forest to learn how to grow your own medicine in the Pacific Northwest! Together, we will explore the benefits of planting medicinals in the home garden, and understand how to choose plants for the right conditions—from roots to flowers. Engage in a hands-on opportunity to plant a medicinal garden at The Duvall Food Forest that will nourish community for years to come. 

Starting with the building blocks of a healing or sanctuary garden space, we will meet medicinal plants from herbal traditions worldwide that thrive in our climate. From an ecological lens, we will look at the functions and layers they serve (i.e. sub-canopy, groundcover) and how we can best incorporate them at home. We will also touch on harvesting basics as they apply to planning a garden, and taste a few medicines together before we contribute unique plantings to The Duvall Food Forest’s medicinal garden. Participants will walk away with a handout, at least one medicinal plant start, and more confidence to design + create an apothecary garden at home.  Participants can expect to learn:

• Design basics and essential elements for creating healing gardens and sanctuary.
• Various medicinal plants from herbal traditions around the world.
• The ecological function and role of various medicinal plants.
• Harvesting techniques for various medicinal plants.
• Getting to know medicinal plants through taste.
• How to design, plan, and plant a medicinal herb garden!

About the instructor

Katie Vincent (they/she) is an ecological garden coach, herbalist and educator based out of Duvall, WA. They’ve worked with plants and people for over 17 years, most recently as the garden manager at Bastyr University and as a lecturer for UW School of Landscape Architecture. Katie believes that in these extraordinary times of climate upheaval, the Earth needs all the “green thumbs” it can get. They offer courses and coaching to birth the next generation of soulful, attuned land stewards in their small business Tending Alive: www.tendingalive.com.