Herbs with Rosalee

Enrollment for my new online course, Herbal Heart Health, closes tonight!

In this course, my friend Rich Mandelbaum and I explore how herbs can support heart health, from high cholesterol and blood pressure to arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, and stroke recovery.

You’ll learn how to choose appropriate herbs for different people, understand lab work, and navigate herb-drug interactions with greater confidence, including questions about combining herbs with statins and blood thinners.

Rich brings years of hands-on clinical herbalism experience, and together, we’re giving these important topics the depth and attention they deserve.

We meet live on Wednesday evenings, with plenty of time for your questions. You’ll also receive lifetime access to all class recordings.

This first offering is available at beta tuition, the lowest price this course will ever be.

Enrollment closes tonight! If you’d like to deepen your knowledge of herbal heart care, I’d love to see you in class.

Enroll in the Herbal Heart Health course here!

What do you get when you combine a mysterious berry, a bottle with David Bowie on the label, and an herbalist determined to get everyone dancing?

In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Mel Kasting to discuss aralia berry (Aralia racemosa), an herb that I admittedly knew almost nothing about before our conversation! Mel fondly refers to aralia berry as “dance berry” because of its remarkable ability to help people feel more at home in their bodies and more connected to one another. She also talks about the many other gifts of aralia berry, including its ability to support people who feel depleted, disconnected, or weighed down by prolonged stress or grief.

Beyond aralia berry, Mel shares insights from her work as a clinical herbalist, including a powerful lesson she learned early in her practice about the importance of meeting people where they are. We also discuss the role mentorship can play in helping herbalists build confidence, deepen their understanding, and develop their clinical skills.

You can download the beautifully illustrated recipe card for Mel’s Life of the Party Elixir, a delightful mixture of aralia berry and other herbs, here. But be careful—it might just inspire you to get up and dance!

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► Why Mel sees aralia berry as a plant of connection and restoration, rather than simply another stimulating herb

► What makes aralia berry different from other herbs commonly used as social lubricants

► Why Mel prefers working with aralia’s berries instead of its more well-known root

► How aralia differs from its cousin ginseng and other adaptogenic herbs

► Where to find aralia in the wild

► Tips for growing, wildcrafting, and ethically harvesting aralia berry

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know her, Mel Kasting is a clinical herbalist, educator, and botanist with more than ten years of clinical experience. As Clinical Director and Free Clinic Manager at the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine, she oversees accessible community care and helps train emerging clinical herbalists. Her work integrates traditional Western herbalism, clinical nutrition, somatic practices, public health, and harm reduction.

Through Forest Edge Herbals, Mel offers consultations, mentorship, plant walks, and community education. In her clinical practice, she supports people navigating chronic illness, mental and nervous system health concerns, and mast cell and allergic conditions, including alpha-gal syndrome, with individualized, person-centered herbal support.

I’m so excited to share our conversation with you today!

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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com

Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.

You can find Mel at ForestEdgeHerbals.com.

For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!

Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.

If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!

On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.

Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

Is garlic overhyped for heart health? You’ve heard it can help balance cholesterol, but does it actually work? And how do you use it to get results?

In this video, I explore how garlic works, why preparation matters, and what research says about garlic’s effects on cholesterol and heart health.

► Learn how crushing, chopping, or mincing garlic helps form allicin, a compound behind many of garlic’s heart benefits.

► Discover why letting garlic rest for ten minutes before cooking can help preserve allicin formation.

► Explore how garlic varieties differ in their allicin content, including why elephant garlic is different from true garlic.

► Review research on garlic and cholesterol, including findings from clinical trials.

► Learn what research has found about aged garlic extract and coronary artery plaque.

Garlic is just one of the herbs we explore in depth in Herbal Heart Health, my brand new course co-taught with herbalist Rich Mandelbaum. Learn to assess energetic patterns, read bloodwork, navigate herb-drug interactions, and choose herbs that fit the person in front of you, working alongside doctors and medications, not around them.

Enrollment closes October 28. Join us in Herbal Heart Health through here!

Hey friends, Rosalee here! I wanted to make sure you knew that I’m co-hosting a free webinar with my friend and fellow herbalist Rich Mandelbaum. We’ve teamed up to talk about 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart.

Sign up for the free webinar here: https://freeherbwebinar.com/

Heart health is one of the most common reasons people turn to herbalists, and chances are someone you love is thinking about their blood pressure, their cholesterol, or the medications they’re taking. There’s so much herbs and simple daily practices can offer the heart, and Rich and I are excited to share some of the ways we approach heart health that go well beyond the basics.

Whether you’re a practitioner, a student, or someone who wants to care for your own heart or your family’s, I think you’ll walk away with new ways of seeing heart health and plenty of practical ideas.

It’s free, it’s live, and there will be time for your questions. I’d love to see you there!

Webinar details

• Topic: 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart
• When: Thursday, October 22, at 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern

Sign up for the free webinar here: https://freeherbwebinar.com/

And if you can’t make it live, register anyway and we’ll do our best to get the recording out to you.

Hawthorn is one of my favorite herbs, and I get a lot of questions about it! In this video, I answer three of the most common ones.

Should you use the berries or the flowers and leaves? Can you safely harvest hawthorn from trees in your neighborhood? And what should you know about using hawthorn alongside heart medications?

We’ll explore different ways to prepare hawthorn, practical tips for responsible wild harvesting, and research on hawthorn extract used alongside conventional heart failure medications. I’ll also share why understanding the whole person is such an important part of the herbalist’s approach to heart health.

Want to learn more about herbal approaches to heart health?

Join my friend and fellow herbalist Rich Mandelbaum and me for our free webinar, 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart, on Thursday, October 22, 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern.

Sign up here. If you can’t attend live, register anyway so you can receive the replay if it becomes available.

Many gardeners are familiar with borage: those gorgeous, starry blue flowers that bees absolutely adore. But what if there’s more to borage than just a pretty face?

In this episode, I sit down with Bridget Giuffrida to discuss the many virtues of borage (Borago officinalis). During our conversation, Bridget shares how she loves to work with borage as a cooling, soothing ally for the skin, emotional overwhelm, and the changes that come with perimenopause.

We also talk about the simple pleasure of spending time with borage in the garden—and what we might discover when we slow down enough to really pay attention to a plant.

Bridget also shares her recipe for Borage Blossom Honey, a simple and delicious way to work with this lovely flower. Download your beautifully illustrated recipe card here!

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► How borage can offer gentle support when life feels like it’s running at full throttle

► What makes borage such a wonderful herbal ally for the skin

► How this plant became associated with courage—and why that reputation has endured for centuries

► Over a dozen ways to bring borage into your kitchen and apothecary (from the prettiest of ice cubes, to tinctures, liniments, and more!)

► What to consider before using borage internally

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know her, Bridget Giuffrida is a community herbalist, educator, herbal formulator, and founder of Sweet Herb Medicinals, a handcrafted herbal apothecary in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. Her relationship with plants began in the foothills of Northern California’s Sierra Nevada, and for 30 years she has studied, grown, gathered, and worked with herbs.

For 20 years, Sweet Herb Medicinals has been a place for herbal education, handcrafted preparations, botanical skincare, and hands-on learning for adults and youth. She is also co-founder of Bella Flora Expeditions, combining her love of plants, travel, food, culture, and landscape to create immersive botanical journeys around the world.

There’s something lovely about a plant that brings so much life to a garden while inviting us to find a little more steadiness in our own. May borage bring you a fresh appreciation for the everyday wonders growing all around you.

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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com

Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.

You can find Bridget at SweetHerbMedicinals.com.

For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!

Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.

If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!

On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.

Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) is one of those plants that can be easy to overlook. It’s gentle, pleasant, and uncomplicated—but that simplicity is exactly what makes it so useful.

In this episode, Amy Boldt and I explore what makes marshmallow such a versatile plant ally, along with some of the ways she has come to work with it over the years, from cold infusions to adding the powdered root to food, and even old-fashioned marshmallow candy!

We discuss marshmallow’s moistening, demulcent qualities, and why it has such a strong affinity for soothing hot, irritated tissues throughout the body.

Amy also shares her recipe for Marshmallow Root Electuary Balls, a staple in her apothecary perfect for soothing a dry, irritated throat. Download your beautifully illustrated recipe card here!

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► How marshmallow’s gifts can benefit your GI tract from top to bottom

► Why many herbalists prefer working with marshmallow as a cold infusion rather than a hot tea

► What the taste and consistency of your marshmallow infusion might tell you about the quality and freshness of the root

► Why marshmallow’s moistening qualities make it less appropriate for certain kinds of coughs

► How growing some of your own herbs can help you to become a better herbalist

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know her, Amy started her journey on the path to herbalism having been inspired by self-sufficiency. Her interest in medicinal plants and foraging led her to the Maryland University of Integrative Health (now Notre Dame of MD University) where she earned a Masters of Science in Therapeutic Herbalism. Since graduating from MUIH Amy has become a Registered Herbalist with the AHG and is one of Margi Flint’s Legacy Teachers.

Amy also has a private practice as a clinical herbalist specializing in sleep, anxiety, and digestive-related issues, and grows many of the herbs she uses on her herb farm in Westminster, MD. When not seeing clients, she can be found teaching classes in local community spaces, as well as at a number of herb schools and community colleges.

I’m delighted to share our conversation with you today!

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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com

Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.

You can find Amy at TheWildWomanMedicine.com.

For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!

Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.

If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!

On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.

Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

Have you ever tried an herb that everyone swears by, and it did nothing for you—or even made things worse? Good news: it all comes down to energetics, and once you learn to see people and plants through this lens, you’ll be able to choose the right herbs with confidence.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked you to send in your questions about herbal energetics—and send them in you did!

In this episode, I’m answering some of the questions I heard most often:

• Why would an herb work for one person, but not for someone else?
• What if your signs are mixed and you don’t fit into neat categories of hot or cold, dry or damp?
• What to do when your body changes over time?
• Can you keep working with the herbs you love, even if they’re not a great energetic match?

Along the way, I'll give you a few simple questions you can ask yourself tonight about your constitution and energetics, so you can begin to apply these principles to your own herbal practice.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► What to do when choosing herbs for a person who runs hot—but whose symptoms are cold

► Why your energetics can shift dramatically during different seasons of life

► How preparation can change the energetic experience of an herb

► How combining herbs can help you work around qualities that are too warming, cooling, drying, or moistening

►Why the way an herb is grown can matter—and how to use your tastebuds to determine whether it will work for you

►and so much more…

If this episode has you wanting to go deeper, my Herbal Energetics Course is a great place to learn more. In the course, we’ll move beyond the basic framework and into hands-on practice with taste, temperature, moisture, herbal actions—and yes, lots of plants! Enrollment closes this Saturday, October 3rd, so don’t delay! Learn more and sign up here.

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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com

Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.

For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!

Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.

If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!

On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.

Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

How do we actually know what’s in our herbs?

Herbs rarely come with nutritional labels, and how a plant is grown, harvested, and stored can dramatically change what ultimately ends up in your cup.

There are two ways we can learn more about what our herbs contain. We can turn to tested data, including resources like Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical Database, but we also have another incredibly useful tool available to us wherever we go: our own senses.

In this episode, I’m using oatstraw as an example to explore organoleptics, the practice of learning about plants through taste, smell, sight, and feel.

► What organoleptics means and why it’s such a useful skill for herbalists

► How tested data and our sensory experiences can work together to help us understand a plant

► What oatstraw’s soft sweetness can tell us about its nourishing qualities

► How its silky, slightly slippery texture reveals its moistening and demulcent qualities

► What oatstraw’s subtle mineral-rich salty flavor can tell us about the plant

► Why you don’t need special equipment or a magical ability to start developing your organoleptic skills

With nothing more than taste and texture, I can already recognize oatstraw as nourishing and moistening. Those qualities fit beautifully with how herbalists work with oatstraw as a soothing plant, especially for the nervous system and for people who feel burnt up and fried out.

There are five main flavors in herbal medicine, and each taste offers us a doorway into how an herb works. Learning to recognize those patterns can completely change the way you experience the plants around you.

And the wonderful thing is that organoleptics is a skill you can learn. You build it one plant at a time by slowing down and paying attention to what’s actually in your cup.

That’s exactly what I teach inside my Herbal Energetics Course.

Enrollment opens only once a year, and this year it closes October 3rd.

Join the Herbal Energetics Course here.

Your tongue can tell you more about an herb than you might think.

In this episode, I explore one of the most useful skills in herbalism: learning to listen to the language of taste. The five flavors—bitter, sweet, pungent, salty, and sour—each have so much information to offer about a plant’s qualities and actions in your body, giving you a practical way to understand herbs (instead of trying to memorize endless lists of which herbs are “good for” which conditions).

I’ll guide you through these five flavors as we take a walk through my garden, highlighting each of the flavors with a different herb. For each of these herbs, you’ll learn how it tastes (though of course, the best way to learn this is to taste it yourself!), what that taste is telling you about the qualities of the plant, and some ways you can use those qualities to guide how you work with the plant.

Plus, I’ll introduce you to the Flavor Wheel, a simple tool I created to help you match the taste of an herb with its energetics and actions. You can get your own copy of the Flavor Wheel when you sign up for my free mini Herbal Energetics Course, which is happening right now and for a short time only! Sign up here.

Here's some of what you'll hear:

► Do you tend to feel hot, tense, and wound up by the end of the day? You'll hear why a bitter herb can be such a good match.

► Do you notice dryness in your throat, skin, or digestion? You'll learn how a sweet, slippery plant softens dry tissues throughout your body.

► Are you feeling frazzled, overworked, and spread too thin? You'll find out which pungent, aromatic herb can bring steadiness and clear focus.

► Have you ever wondered how an herb can be salty when it tastes nothing like table salt? You'll get the answer and why it matters.

► Curious why one bright, sour plant has such a long relationship with the heart? You'll hear how it supports both the physical and emotional heart.

The more you taste your herbs, the more you realize that plants are constantly giving us clues—you just have to learn their language. And that’s what I love about this approach: it gives us a way to slow down, pay attention, and let the plant tell us something about itself.

If you’re ready to learn more, come join me in my free mini Herbal Energetics Course! I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com

Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.

For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!

Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.

If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!

On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.

Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.