Educational Partners
Relational Uprising
Relational Uprising works with “organizations and communities to foster a resilient, interdependent, relational culture of complex connection and inclusive collaboration. Relational Uprising strives to align with the life protective principles of our social ecology, and to disrupt the dominant culture of disconnection, desensitization, isolation and exclusion.” VCIH has been learning from and collaborating with Cedar Landsman and Lucien Demaris, founders of Relational Uprising, since 2018 to develop our relational organizational culture and integrated, herbalist-specific curriculum for our programs.
We highly recommend their public training programs, as well as their organizational consulting and coaching.
UpS is a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of North American native medicinal plants and their habitats. VCIH is honored to participate in UpS’s Partners In Education program.
Partner Businesses
These businesses support us through participation in our Member Discount Program, offering discounts to our apothecary, and providing educational opportunities to our students via farm tours and site visits.
Arcana Gardens (Member Discount Program participant)
Established in 1993, Arcana’s farm is located on 140 beautiful acres in Jericho, a small town in the foothills of the Green Mountains of northwestern Vermont. Originally growing fresh produce for local farmers markets, Arcana has evolved into a nursery featuring many varieties of plants and seedlings, including an excellent selection of medicinal annuals and perennials. Their plants are available in-person and via online order.
East Hill Tree Farm, founded by Nicko Rubin in 2008, offers landscape consultation, design, planting and pruning; grows fruit and nut trees; and operates a retail nursery and annual bare-root sale. They grow a wide variety of edible and useful woody species to improve the health of our landscapes and our communities. They endeavor not to plant single trees, but to establish whole ecosystems, in which people play an integral role. They carry numerous medicinal and food species, available via on-farm visit. Nicko hosts our students for an inspiring tour of the farm in Plainfield each summer.
Foster Farm Botanicals (Member Discount Program participant)
This 250-acre certified organic family farm produces over 30 herbs just up the road from us in East Calais, Vermont. They are passionate about growing and work hard to preserve the integrity of each individual botanical through every step of the process, from seed to sale. We’re delighted to stock our apothecary with many of their high quality bulk herbs and we’re grateful for their support via participation in our member discount program and offering farm tours for our students.
We couldn’t operate our apothecary without Matthew Persico and his team at Galen’s Way. Their mission is to provide the highest quality herbal extracts to the practitioner and clinic market while embodying practices of a community-oriented business. Their beautiful, effective tinctures have been one of the foundations of our clinic since our earliest days, as has Matthew’s generous support of our mission through his pricing and business practices. We recommend Galen’s Way to all clinicians in need of high quality tinctures they can’t make themselves.
Grian Herbs (Member Discount Program participant)
Grian Herbs is a handcrafter of small batch herbal extracts, compounds, teas, syrups, and freshly processed botanical infusions. Grian Herbs has been providing high quality herbal products in Vermont since 1997, originally operated by one of VCIH’s co-founders, Guido Masé. The current owner and formulator, Iris Gage, is one of VCIH’s earliest graduates. Now a clinical herbalist and professional member of the American Herbalists Guild, she uses her clinical knowledge to make the highest quality herbal remedies and offers them through her beautiful apothecary shop in downtown Montpelier, VT. Iris served as a clinical supervisor for our student interns and signed on as one of our first member discount program participants. We’re grateful for her ongoing partnership and support.
Railyard Apothecary (Member Discount Program participant)
Red Wagon Plants (Member Discount Program participant)
Zack Woods Herb Farm (Member Discount Program participant)
Our friends Jeff Carpenter and Melanie Slick-Carpenter started Zack Woods Herb Farm in 2001 to fulfill their dreams of providing high-quality herbs to the community, while stewarding the land they love. They support our work by generously offering VCIH a discount on bulk herbs, as well as periodically providing a farm tour for our first-year students. We always learn new things and have fun helping out with the calendula harvest. We encourage everyone to order their gorgeous bulk herbs directly or find their single herbs and tea blends at local retailers.
Professional Organizations
American Herbalists Guild
The American Herbalists Guild was founded in 1989 as a non-profit, educational organization to represent the goals and voices of herbalists specializing in the medicinal use of plants. Their primary goal is to promote a high level of professionalism and education in the study and practice of therapeutic herbalism. VCIH is an educational member and our curriculum exceeds the educational guidelines established by AHG for professional herbalists.
Other Partners
Numen: The Healing Power of Plants
This documentary film features luminaries such as Rosemary Gladstar and Kenny Ausubel, as well as one of our co-founders and faculty, Guido Masé. Connecting the health of the planet with human health, the message of Numen is that ecological medicine is rooted in whole plant medicine and in the work of herbalists and allied practitioners and activists working towards a sane and sustainable healthcare system. Produced by anthropologist and herbalist Ann Armbrecht and film-maker Terrance Youk, this film and its accompanying website is meant to be a catalyst for conversation and action at the community level. We encourage you to visit the site, check out the articles and resources and get involved. Helpful pages explain everything from how to make a salve to selecting herbs for use in fevers. These articles were written by Vermont herbalists Sandra Lory, Dana Woodruff and VCIH director, Larken Bunce. You might also recognize Larken’s botanical photographs, featuring some of VCIH’s students and gardens.
