Portland Herb Craft School: Medicinal Herb Cultivation Series

Portland Herb Craft School is a mobile herb growing school that moves locations each year. Its mission is to spread knowledge about medicinal plants while cultivating them in the city and beyond. Each year will take on a new theme and project depending on the host's location.

In 2024, The Portland Grief House is the host for Portland Herb Craft School. Together, we will be exploring grief as we design and cultivate a medicinal herb tea garden for the space. The herbs we cultivate will be used to support those sitting with grief for years to come at The Portland Grief House.

Throughout the 5 part course, we will learn: How to cultivate medicinal herbs with care, basic regenerative agricultural practices, how to design an herbal garden, how to preserve herbs as herbal remedies, an introductory course in traditional plant uses, how to make farm and garden purchases locally, how to build a budget greenhouse, options for irrigation setup, how to build a simple dehydrator and how we can use the herbs we grow to explore grief.

Class 2 - Irrigation and Planting - May 11th

In class 2 we will prepare our garden space for planting, build a raised bed and plant the starts that we seeded together in March. We will look at soil health and create the ideal environment to retain water, prevent weeds and promote plant health.

Topics Covered:

• Building raised beds
• Creating a soil mix for the raised beds
• Applying amendments to improve soil health
• Adding mulch to our plan to retain water and prevent weeds
• Planting our herb starts

Lizzy Simpson is farmer, herbalist, newbie death doula and lead educator at Portland Herb Craft School. Lizzy founded the medicinal herb farm Rise Up Remedies in 2018 which she co-owned until its closure in 2023. Prior to farm ownership, Lizzy studied at the Elderberry School of Botanical Medicine and farmed at several diversified vegetable farms in Oregon, Colorado and North Carolina. She holds a masters degree in Agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Lizzy is starting her journey as a death doula by creating "Death Ware" that promotes conversations about death.

Learn more about the whole series and Lizzy's work at her website, Ithir.co.

Pricing:

$35 to $70 per class

Standard ticket: $55 -  If you have the capacity to pay at this price, your ticket will cover the cost of materials and pay the instructor in full.

Community Ticket - $35 - If you are stretched financially, a ticket purchased at this price will cover the cost of materials and partially pay the instructor.

Pay it Forward Ticket - $75  - If you are financially comfortable, a ticket at this price will cover the cost of materials, pay the instructor in full, and cover the remaining cost for someone's community ticket.

If you attended class 1 and are interested in attending future classes, please message Lizzy at hello@ithir.co for a prorated price option. Please feel free to reach out if you didn’t attend class 1 and would like to sign up for the remaining parts of the series.