Mondays, 9am- 5pm
April 14th – November 3rd, 2025
188 hours
$2730
A stand-alone program for the beginning herbal student, this true apprenticeship-style year emphasizes hands-on, embodied learning and is ideal for those who are new to herbs, but keen to make them part of their daily lives. This course provides a thorough understanding of using herbs for self-care. During the Summer months, students spend half of each day with their hands in the dirt, learning to grow and harvest common herbs. The remainder of the day is spent preparing remedies and learning to use herbs to maintain health, as well as address common complaints safely and effectively. Additional topics include an introduction to the rich history of herbal medicine, fundamental energetic concepts, the science of nature, and basic physiology of body systems.
Apprentices take home a full kit of remedies, a strong skill set for self-care, and a beautiful certificate of completion.
Students can choose to attend the program as a stand alone course or apply to continue into the Family or Clinical Herbalist programs, using the apprenticeship as their prerequisite.
Faculty: Joann Darling and Netta Mae Walsh; guest faculty: Betzy Bancroft
For details about the teachers for for this program, visit our Faculty page.
Roots Program Course Breakdown
Garden Practicum: Herb Cultivation and Wildcrafting (65 Hours)
A substantial part of the season will be dedicated to herb gardening for the purpose of growing and maintaining one’s own apothecary in accordance with the natural rhythms of the plants and the year. Students will learn about soil amendment and seed starting, moving through garden design and co-creating with nature, planting, tending, harvesting, drying, composting, and ending with root harvest, seed-saving, and putting the garden to bed. As a true apprenticeship-style learning environment, we’ll emphasize learning by doing, spaciousness within experience, and connection with the plants. We’ll learn through embodied practice of being a garden steward and wild-crafter, which is hard work, but also exceptionally fun and rewarding.
The Herbalist’s Worldview (18 Hours)
We’ll trace the roots of folk herbal practice through the old herbals, explore how the patterns of nature manifest in our constitutions and illnesses, and investigate those patterns from mythological, physiological and ecological perspectives. Herbal medicine offers a synthesis of these ancient and modern threads, which will serve as a strong foundation for our experiences with the herbs and their relationships to us as we get out into the garden and woods.
Home Remedies for Self-Care (65 Hours)
Basic anatomy and physiology, key materia medica and herbal actions for common concerns of each body system will be addressed. In addition, chronic disease prevention, basic first aid and other holistic tools for self-care will be covered. Students will learn how to support good digestion; prevent and care for colds, flus and respiratory allergies; support blood quality and circulation; care for minor infections, wounds, injuries and burns; manage stress and support restful sleep; and much more.
Medicine-Making (40 Hours)
The herbal remedies we make will be closely aligned with topics covered for each body system, reinforcing our discussions of which herbs to choose and how to apply them in the most efficacious way. We’ll demonstrate and create together a wide variety of herbal preparations, including infusions and decoctions, poultices, compresses and hydrotherapy, herbal tinctures, vinegars, infused oils, honeys and oxymels, syrups, elixirs and other delicious tonics. Students will take home lots of products, such as elderberry syrup and fire cider, building the foundation of a great home apothecary.
View the book list for Herbal Roots here. Many of these titles are available via our online Bookshop.org shop, a non-profit online bookseller that supports independent bookshops and donates 10% of sales to us.
Roots Program FAQs
No. Our Herbal Roots Apprenticeship is offered in person, with all classes held outside under our big event tent and in the gardens. However, we do start the year in early spring with three online class days until the weather warms up and the ground thaws completely.
Mondays, 9-5 ET
Most days include a 1.25 hour lunch break plus multiple 10-15 minute breaks throughout the day and between classes.
Yes! Roots takes two weeks off at the end of August and beginning of September.
You will need access to a computer with high speed internet during the first 3 class days in order to participate via the Zoom platform. We strongly recommend students use laptop or desktop computers with cameras and audio enabled, as phones and tablets do not support the full functionality of Zoom or Google Classroom, both of which are required for participation in these live classes.
After the first few weeks, students will need access to a computer weekly, on Sundays, at minimum in order to receive information about class the next day, as well as to engage with any resources posted in the virtual classroom.
We use an expanded-capacity version of the Zoom platform, intended for educational use, which provides more security along with closed captioning and auto-transcription. The classes first few classes are recorded for future access for students, as needed.
We use GSuite for Education (aka Google Workspace), which gives each student access to a student email, along with the Google Classroom platform, where we post all of the materials and handouts for the program. Students also get access to our school calendar, a student forum and document storage.
You can find a detailed description of our policies and practices here. By enrolling in any of our programs, you are agreeing to abide by these policies.
The tuition reflects a rate of $13/classroom hour for Herbal Roots Apprenticeship and $15/classroom hour for Family and Clinical Programs. We recognize that the total cost of attendance is significant and may appear to be higher than that of other advanced programs. We recommend researching the total number of classroom contact hours of all programs you are considering and comparing hourly rates for the most accurate cost comparison. In our research, we’ve found other live online or in-person clinically-oriented programs charge between $15 and $28/contact or classroom hour. While our per hour cost is at the bottom of this scale, the number of hours we offer is significantly higher than most other programs, increasing our tuition accordingly.
Books and materials are not included in the cost of tuition. Costs for the Herbal Roots Apprenticeship are approximately $100; costs for the Family Herbalist and Clinical Herbalist programs are roughly $300/per year (not including expenses for the camping trip in year two of the Clinical program). You can find a sample book and materials list here to give you an idea of what to expect. (Please note this is ONLY A SAMPLE list. The current list will be provided upon enrollment.)
Yes! VCIH offers BIPOC Reparations and Need-Based tuition reduction opportunities. Visit this page for more information and to apply.
Applications should be completed at the same time as the admissions application. Unfortunately, tuition reduction is limited, so students must submit applications on time to ensure consideration.
Once our application deadline has passed, new applications will be placed on a wait list and you will be contacted if an interview slot becomes available.
Check out our detailed course comparison chart here.