The People’s Medicine Garden invites clients and community members to work directly with the healing plants. We also offer workshops and events at our garden space.
People’s Medicine garden is located at the Just Roots Community Farm in Greenfield. Our 3 little community garden plots sure produce a lot of medicine! We are grateful for our garden’s gifts, and the home we found at Just Roots, a community farm dedicated to food justice. We celebrate these, while simultaneously acknowledging that Just Roots and our garden plots are located on unceded Abenaki and Pocumtuk land. We can guess about some of the medicinal plants that grew originally on this land (note, this plant information comes from the Cowasuck band farther north, in New Hampshire.).
Today, the People’s Medicine Garden contains medicinal plants from the Americas and Eurasia. In our medicine garden, we choose plants that are easy to grow, safe, and tasty, and focus on teaching simple remedies and preparations. Weekly throughout the growing season, we gather with volunteers to tend the garden, harvest herbs, and make medicine. The herbs are dried for teas, or made into tinctures for the clinic, or taken home by volunteers. There’s always plenty to share!
The garden offers the opportunity to develop relationships with healing plants. We believe that spending time with the plants is part of the medicine! We also offer seasonal workshops that range in topics related to herbalism, health justice, and native plant conservation. Sign up for our mailing list to find out about our next garden event!
If you are interested in joining us in the garden this season, be in touch! All are welcome– you don’t need any previous gardening experience. garden@peoplesmedicineproject.org
Herbal Knowledge is Power!
The name “People’s Medicine” celebrates the coevolved relationship between humans and plants since the beginning of human life. Every culture in the world has used plants as food and medicine. Knowledge of plants has been passed down in communities, as life saving medicine, as kitchen table remedies, or as parts of sacred ceremonies. And humans have even adapted to finding local healing plants, despite enslavement, and removal from traditional lands. Herbal knowledge is power, and we feel an urgency about of keeping access to this knowledge alive, and in the hands of people, not companies. Traditional remedies are the “People’s Medicine!”
Earth and Landcare Ethics
- We acknowledge that our garden is on unceded Abenaki and Pocumtuk land.
- We give thanks for the land, the plants, and honor that relationship.
- We practice reciprocity when we harvest.
- We promote organic gardening practices; and emphasize local, easy-to-grow plants.
- We participate in sustainable wildcrafting of local abundant plants (bioregional herbalism).
- We refrain from using threatened plants in our apothecary.
- We educate our community against using threatened, endangered, rare or sacred plants. We teach about cultural contexts, and alternatives that are available and abundant in our bioregion.
- We don’t take more than our share, and we don’t waste what we have taken.
- We share our harvests with the community.
- We reuse materials in our apothecary (primarily, glassware) whenever possible.