Aspiring foragers and herbalists can head over to the Farm at Awbury Arboretum’s  “Wild Wisdom & Potluck” on Sept. 7 for a chance to delve into the secrets that nature has to offer. The event, part of a larger course series, aims to teach participants about the wild edible and medicinal plants that are native to the Philadelphia area.

This standalone event is part of a larger course designed by herbalist Alyssa Schimmel to introduce participants to the common and underutilized wild plants of the Philadelphia bio-region, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape/Wingohocking people. The course, aptly named Wild Wisdom, takes a close look at native plants with a focus on some of the Lenape uses of those plants, and “how different plants have wound up on this land mass that we all share,” Schimmel said. 

The class covers the ethics and safety issues in foraging, she said, and includes a discussion of each plant in context. It ends with students harvesting plants for food and medicine, and then gathering together to enjoy what they make. 

For instance, there’s Goldenrod, a meadow plant which is just now starting to bloom.

“That’s great for treating urinary conditions, and draining abscesses and boils of the skin,” she said. “It also makes a great digestive tonic and a muscle rub too.”

And if you soak it in apple cider vinegar along with some honey, you get a warming syrup that makes a great addition to either club soda or your favorite cocktail. 

Spicebush produces an aromatic bitter that offers an effective respiratory tonic that can reduce fever, clear congestion from the lungs as well as alleviate digestive gas. In fall, the females develop shiny, lipstick red berries. When you grind them up, they produce something like a native allspice, with flavorful hints of nutmeg, close and cinnamon.

Then there’s Sumac, the only shrub that’s native to all 48 contiguous states and grows wild in scrubby edgelands. A 10-20 foot tall shrub with short, crooked trunks that produce yellow-green flowers and pyramids of clustered, furry berries, it makes a “great urinary tonic that can dry up excessive urination.”

It also produces a distinct flavor that is a prominent ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking, she said. 

“If you dry them and grind them into a powder they have a wonderful lemony flavor – you can soak it in water and make lemonade,” she said. 

Schimmel, who now lives in Malvern, began exploring the healing power of plants in 2010, as she was experiencing health issues of her own. Then she moved to North Carolina, where she studied herbs and began rounding out her diet through foraging. 

“I was just so blown away by how much food and medicine and plants of pleasure there are all around us,” she said. 

Schimmel is now on maternity leave, so the Sept. 7 class is being taught by Tiffany Johnson-Robbins, another long-time herbalist who Schimmel met back in 2018. 

Schimmel previously served as education director of the Philadelphia Orchard Project, where she developed the School Orchard Program serving 14 K-12 schools, and has collaborated with Awbury Arboretum to teach medicine making to youth of the Teen Leadership Program, cater seasonal dinners, and teach medicine making and wild foods classes throughout the Philadelphia region. 

Her course is offered as a four-part, three-hour workshop series covering each season’s bountiful harvest: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Classes can be taken as a stand-alone class, or as a discounted four-part series with an optional wild-food potluck to follow.

Alyssa Schimmel also teaches the 9-month Herbal Aid Ed program, which covers the use of medicinal plants and medicine making for mutual care. Each class includes hands-on time in medicinal processing methods when students produce infusions, decoctions, tinctures, salves, infused honey, vinegars, electuaries, syrups, flower essences, incense, powders, soaks, and more. Students make shares of medicine for personal, family, and community distribution and become healing advocates in their community. 

The program covers an introduction to more than plants from a range of cross-cultural traditions, weaving together the wisdom from many hands and many lands that includes cultivated, wild, and native medicines of our Philadelphia bioregion.

In 2021, course participants distributed over 400 pieces of herbal medicine including salves, teas, glycerites, electuaries, and oxymels to the Germantown community.

Price: $40 per class, $150 for full series, free to join potluck. The rain date for the Sept. 7 class is Sept. 8.