Nikki Darrell, MBS BSc (Hons) Dip Phyt MIRH MIFA, Herbalist, Aromatherapist, Botanist, A Bean Luighis on the Bean Feasa path. From an early age Nikki was fascinated with plants; how to grow them, their therapeutic uses, their perfumes, and the food they provide. She started growing herbs at the age of 8, bought her first herbal at the age of 11 and has not looked back since.

Nikki works as a practitioner of herbal medicine, aromatherapy, and aromatic medicine. She attended the Sutton Bonnington campus of Nottingham University to study Horticulture and Plant Science (because she could not find anywhere to train as a herbalist) and after graduating spent 5 years as a research scientist researching into phytochemistry and plant tissue culture. Having discovered the School of Phytotherapy she decided to move back to her first love of working with medicinal plants and so studied massage, aromatherapy and fitness instruction as a way of paying her way through herbal school.

 In 1999 she graduated with a diploma in Herbal Medicine from the School of Phytotherapy. In 2008 she completed a Masters in Social and Co-operative Enterprise with her minor thesis researching the potential for co-operatives to help develop a Medicinal and Aromatic Plant growing sector in Ireland.

 Nikki runs introductory courses about herbs and their uses, as well as forage walks and has groups of students visit the garden here to learn more about identifying and using the 200 plus species that grow here.

Nikki runs introductory courses about herbs and their uses, as well as forage walks and has groups of students visit the garden here to learn more about identifying and using the 200 plus species that grow here.

Nikki has set up a 2-year Apprenticeship course in Herbal and Botanical Medicine for people who wish to learn community herbalism.

She also designed the Clinical Practitioner training and is the course coordinator and one of the teachers on this program. She teaches on the Nature Resonance programme with her partner Alex Duffy and is passionate about helping people reconnect with their inner nature and the wider community of nature without.

She has lectured for 3rd level institutions and also has presented at various conferences including Herbfeast, Herbfest and Plant Consciousness. She is a campaigner, a writer (her books include Conversations with Plants volumes 1+2, At Home with Herbs, the Essential Oil Manual and Conversations with Plants, the Path Back to  Nature) and spends as much time as possible in her garden and walking in nature.

Alex has always had a profound love for plants and as a child would help his aunty Joy next door to do her gardening.

His paternal grandmother was a herbalist in her way and the influence of the family lineage is felt today. As a young parent and smallholder, Alex practised herbalism using Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s books along with A Modern Herbal, by Mrs M. Grieve to great effect and learned experientially, participating in developing a herb nursery at that time too.

Alex’s love for Nature has been his guiding principle now for many years and his decade-long apprenticeship to become a Fir Feasa was an utterly transformative period of his life, giving him the tools to really engage in the deep healing he is committed to on both a personal and community level.

Being both a deeply spiritual and practical man Alex left no stone unturned in his search to find the truth of our situation at this time on earth has given him a great and broad range of experience in many experiential methods of healing and evolving one's natural consciousness.
 

During this time Alex attained an MSc in Sustainable Development with Exeter University and discovered during his research in the area of Education for Sustainability, that in order for people to become sustainable they had to become re-enchanted or fall in love with Nature. He participated at international level and trained as a facilitator of; Ecovillage Design Education, Training for Transition, Transition to Resilience Training, Community Resilience Training and these required extensive immersive group residential training's in various parts of the world.

Alex has extensive experience in innovative group work and participatory learning. Alex joined up with Nikki to begin Nature Resonance Medicine and formed the Plant Medicine School a few years ago. Alex is responsible for administration and the online element of the school and is enjoying formalising and furthering his own education in the realm of plant medicine. Alex also set up the Way of Life apprenticeship this year in partnership with Nikki. 

Majella grew up in Kilnamartyr County Cork on a dairy farm. From an early age, she enjoyed walking in the fields getting to know the plants and the nooks and crannies, making little potions from the herbs in her mother’s garden. She completed her massage and aromatherapy training in 2006 and added on training in Reflexology, Reiki, Indian Head massage and Hot Stone massage. 

She went on a herb walk in Macroom in 2009 with Nikki Darrell and decided to do the introductory course and followed this with the Herbal Apprenticeship which she completed in 2013 and went on to participate in the Clinical training which she completed in 2016. Since 2014 she has been assisting with the introductory courses and Herbal Apprenticeship and is now a mentor on the Blended learning stream Apprenticeship.

Majella is also one of the tutors on our Aromatherapy and massage courses. She also runs a busy practice, incorporating all her skills. She holds workshops on kitchen medicine, cooking with herbs and herbal skincare. Her passion for good healthy affordable food has been a great asset as she has helped with the development of the recipes in the Wild Kitchen cookbook.

The birth of her baby Willow in January 2018 has sparked a great interest in helping other parents to know about healthy food, herbal medicines and aromatherapy blends to keep their children well. Another passion is taking photographs of the plants, finding it a great way to connect with them. Majella is involved with the Cork Herb Bike and has helped out with the Herbfeast and Regenerative Plant Medicine Gatherings. 

Siobhan qualified with The Plant Medicine School in 2014 and spent the following 5 years in the USA. She returned back to her native Coachford in early 2019 and began work setting up "The Apothecary at Rockgrove" which is both a practice and a growing site on 2 acres.

Siobhan's aim is to create a semi self-sustaining herbal practice focused on plants that can grow in our native soils as well as provide a space for teaching and learning.

At the heart of Apothecary at Rockgrove is the love of nature and the desire to work harmoniously with it, the ecosystem (including the humans working within it) thrives when it's seen as a collaboration.

While the school space is still a working progress, the land here has been loved and respected for many decades and that is reflected in the biodiversity on site.

Jane was first introduced to herbs by her grandmother as a child when tansy was taken to remedy a common childhood pestilence….. as the years progressed they would wander in the wild with the dog collecting wild edibles and return home to make a meal from the plants foraged.

Jane studied anthropology and sociology at Oxford Brookes University, a path of learning that further piqued her interest in working with plants as food and medicine and the use of indigenous flora for healing purposes in many cultures. Having formalised her qualifications in herbal medicine Jane then moved back to her beloved Somerset to work for The Organic Herb Trading Company as their medicine maker, producing tinctures, glycerites and macerated oils.

More recently her focus has been on quality assurance and the organoleptic assessment of plant material and research and development. Whilst living on a farm for a number of years Jane co-created a herb garden from a field and built up her private practice. Farm life gave her experience in using herbs to promote and maintain animal health and to treat problems ranging from cats, dogs, poultry, pigs, to sheep and cattle.

Having made a life-changing move in 2016 Jane continues to live in deepest rural Somerset where she is currently creating another herb garden with the blessing of two poly-tunnels and empowerment energy from her son and friends. Jane has a passion for sharing knowledge and skills and takes pleasure in mentoring and teaching alongside her work commitments and her private practice. 

Plant ecologist, herbalist, gardener, Jo’s love of plants and the natural world began at a young age, walking with her family in nature and getting to know plants through the seasons.

She made poultices and remedies for her family in her teens but chose to follow her passion for plants and the environment by studying Environmental Life Science at the University of Nottingham, followed by a Masters in Natural Resource Management at the University of Leicester.

She spent the next 10 years working in ecological research and consultancy in the UK and Ireland before starting a family caused her to rethink her life path.

Inspired by a presentation Nikki Darrell gave, she started to study herbs, completing Nikki’s apprenticeship in 2010 and going on to study Clinical Practice with Nikki, finishing in Jan 2013. She now runs her own practice, Blackrock Herbal Clinic in Cork city, and leads plant and food foraging walks within Co. Cork.

She also helps schools and community groups learn about plant growth and running allotments and teaches “Herbal remedies for the home” evening courses. 

www.blackrockherbalclinic.com

Anne McIntyre FNIMH MAPA MCPP is a Fellow of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, a Member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy, and a Member of the Ayurvedic Practitioners’ Association. She has been in clinical practice working as a medical herbalist for over 35 years and for the last 30 years has incorporated Ayurvedic philosophy and medicine into her practice, producing an integrated approach to the care of patients and prescription of herbs.

Anne is the author of many books on herbal medicine and Ayurveda including The Complete Woman’s Herbal, Healing Drinks, The Complete Floral Healer,

Herbal Medicine for Children: Western and Ayurvedic Perspectives, The Complete Herbal Tutor, The Ayurveda Bible and Dispensing with Tradition: A Guide to using Indian and Western Herbs the Ayurvedic Way

Anne runs a busy practice in Gloucestershire and sees patients in London once a month.  She lectures widely on herbal medicine and Ayurveda in the UK and America and runs courses from her home in Gloucestershire where she has a beautiful herb garden. She has an online course in Ayurveda for lay people and other professionals and runs an annual herb conference - Herbfest.

www.learnlivingayurveda.com www.annemcintyre.com

Marie Reilly, MSc, MNIMH, MIRH, Dip Coun, has over 13 years experience as a Medical Herbalist. She qualified from the College of Phytotherapy in 2004 and subsequently completed the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine Masters Degree Programme, having conducted her research dissertation on the treatment of female functional infertility with herbal medicine. She has also studied Endobiogenic Medicine with Dr Jean Claude Lapraz, and Ayurveda with Dr Vasant Lad.

Marie has taught on both the BSc Herbal Sciences course at CIT and the Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Herbal Medicine at the Irish College of Phytotherapy. She has lectured at the Cork Institute of Technology Herbal Science Symposium; at Botanica 2014 (Trinity College Dublin); and at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists Annual Conference. She has also provided numerous CPD seminars on various subjects for practitioners of herbal medicine.

In the past, she has appeared on RTE’s “Health Squad” and “The Afternoon Show”,  on various programmes for WLRfm, and has been interviewed for various National Newspapers in Ireland and the UK.  she continues to write a weekly health column in the Dungarvan Leader and to provide talks and demonstrations for local groups.

Marie is also a qualified Emergency First Responder and is currently the chairperson of the Lismore Community First Response Team, a voluntary service, which she runs in conjunction with a Medical Doctor and Paramedic, to provide emergency first aid in the local community.

The Lismore Clinic - Herbal Medicine 

Andrew qualified from the School of Herbal Medicine in 1986 and has practised in London and Norfolk ever since. For 5 years in the early '90's, he worked at an NHS funded CAM clinic for the over-55's where he developed a special interest in working with older people.

In recent years he has specialised in treating people with long-term and age-related health problems such as chronic inflammatory and cardiovascular disease. 

Andrew was a Senior Lecturer in Herbal Medicine at Middlesex University for 10 years, helping to set up the first BSc in HM there in 1994. He has been President of the NIMK (UK) and Vice-President of the EHPTA.

He is fellow of the NIMH and a member of the CPP. He has written several books on HM including The Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine (3rd ed 2016) and Herbal Remedies (2nd ed 2018) both published by DK.

Christine Herbert qualified as a herbalist in 1997 and has been practising and learning herbal medicine ever since. She retired from practise in August 2019 in order to be able to write, teach and mentor.

During the years of her practise she added iridology, flower essence therapy, kinesiology and allergy therapy and used all those elements in her practice alongside a large proportion of nutritional advice. She specialised in digestive disorders and allergy/intolerance health issues, but all health issues were addressed in her practise.

She served on the council of the Association of Master Herbalists for several years and is still a member of that professional association. She was also one of the organisers of Herbfest UK for seven years.

She co-edited, and wrote many articles for The Herbalist, the journal of the AMH and URHP. Previous to this she was a senior biomedical scientist for 20 years working for the NHS in haematology and blood transfusion.

With her partner, Mark, she runs a self-sufficient small holding in Norfolk UK, growing many of the herbs she used in her practise, and describes herself as being madly in love with all plants, whether they are for medicine, eating or both. http://www.christineherbert.co.uk/

She is the author of two books published by Aeon Books https://www.aeonbooks.co.uk/:

Sleep the Elixir of Life
Inflammation The Source of Chronic Disease

My journey with the Plant Medicine School began in 2016 when I hopped on board at the last minute due to a cancellation in that year’s apprenticeship stream. I remember when Nikki called me to confirm my place I was working in one of the most supremely manicured gardens I have ever been in. It was a place that felt unnatural, disturbing even - the plants were tied to stakes, forced to grow in certain ways, fed synthetic foods to produce the biggest and best flowers. There was a fakeness to it, and the plants were under pressure to uphold that. That phone call was a window, an opportunity, a reminder - there is more to learn, more to realise, more to remember. And looking back I realise that the plants in that garden who had gotten to know me over a couple of years, they sent the utmost of encouragement to follow my nose and join the course, to follow my instincts towards what felt more whole and more real.

Everyone’s journey on the apprenticeship was unique. Some came to the class with a great deal of knowledge of holistic health, anatomy, alternative therapies and orthodox medicine, and some had even completed other herbal medicine courses and apprenticeships.

Others had absolutely no experience; they were entirely new to the vision of the person as a whole being, entirely new to the vision that the psycho-emotional realm of a person was just as important as their physical body, entirely new to the plants (or more accurately to remembering the plants).

Though I only realise this retrospectively, one of the beautiful aspects of the course was in Nikki’s ability to educate twenty human beings of greatly varied capacities and experience, who were all utterly unique  in their approach to learning and life, and even more so, in a way that was heartfelt, authentic and personal to each of us as well.

Through the experience of the apprenticeship, Nikki retained a deeply rooted, powerful, joyful and inspiring connection with the plants; again, and again, and again she reminded us that they are the reason we are on the course, they are who called us here. Not the academic journals, the celebrities, the nonsense - what called us to the course was the plants, and we are here to remember how to listen to them.

As the course progressed, I remembered. I am home. I have never not been home. I am home in my heart, in my body, on the earth. I went deep into the cave of healing and learned both how to be there (and be there well), and also how to emerge from there, and reconnect with the world around me.

The inner realm and the outer realm, they began to dance, or rather I began to notice how they dance. I was addressing educational wounds, traumatic dissociation from the suffering of the world, holes in my aura which allowed for corporate illusions to control me. I was remembering the ways in which I loved to learn, how to embody myself into the wonderful magic of our world and how to protect myself from the evils of the world so I could truly feel safe in the glories of it. I was making mistakes, as we all do, but not being afraid of making them, remembering that they are another way of learning.

I continued to learn with Nikki & Alex for 5 years and continue to learn with them today. It is an absolute pleasure to work with the school, and to see so many students coming home to the plants with the utmost passion and joy, with a system of education that honours each individual student, encourages them to empower themselves in their learning and remember who they really are.

We are an Edinburgh & Glasgow based workers’ cooperative whose central philosophy is that herbal medicine is the medicine of the people and should be accessible to everyone.

We offer a series of practical courses and workshops, run the Wester Hailes Community Herbal Medicine Clinic, and the North Edinburgh Community Herbal Clinic in Granton, support student herbalists with their clinical hours, grow herbs in the the Blackford Glen Medicine Garden, and produce simple resources to enable folks to practice herbalism at home.

As of 2021 we have formed a collaboration with Nikki Darrell & Alex Duffy of the Plant Medicine School in Ireland to create the Plant Medicine School Scotland.

As a Co-op we are members of the Scottish Radical Herbal Network, the Association of Foragers, the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, Herbalists Without Borders UK, and the American Herbalists’ Guild.

About Grass Roots Remedies

Silja started her apprenticeship at The Plant Medicine School in March 2014, completing her practitioner training in November of 2018. When The Plant Medicine School relocated to Hollyfort in 2020 she began work there. Initially supporting the creation of the herbal medicine garden and community field,

Silja found joy in assisting new apprentices on their own learning journey and has extended this to include practitioner students. Her motto is “have fun” (which research has found to be the most efficient way of learning) and “keep it simple”

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” - Lao Tzu

Initially studying for 4 years in UCC she graduated with honours in Business Information Systems. Deciding to progress her interest in health and wellbeing she travelled to India and found Yoga & Reiki becoming a Reiki practitioner in 2011. Continuing her practice in Yoga Chelley later trained in Hatha Yoga and Yin Yoga.

In 2019 she started studying at The Plant Medicine School completing 5 years of apprenticeship and clinical training. After graduating she set up the Willowherb Clinic and apothecary where she treats clients in Cork. She is delighted to be apart of the mentoring team at The Plant Medicine School supporting new budding herbalists in the way that she was supported by others.

As a teenager Karen chose to do a school project on Herbal medicine and scoured the library for information. Karen was fascinated by how the herbs worked in the body and wanted to learn more.  So, Karen qualified as a pharmacist as she thought this would satisfy her curiosity about how chemicals interact within the body.

As a pharmacist, Karen spent time working in a range of different cancer areas and specialised in the safe handling of anti-cancer medicines, building facilities for staff protection and education of other professionals about this. Also, she worked with cystic fibrosis patients, with mental illness and other areas. She has worked in hospitals, large companies and for a small rapidly growing start-up.However, her quest to learn more about plants has never gone away and the little girl who spent the summers in the front “garden” wilderness in the London suburbs, making plant potions has never been tamed.

So, whilst following a conventional pharmacy career path, she rebelled and studied aromatherapy with the Tisserand Institute at the weekends. Aromatherapy then became a constant companion.

Karen developed skincare products for her sensitive skin using natural ingredients and essential oils, as she was struggling to find anything she liked to buy. She set up a company to sell the products, after much nagging from friends who wanted to buy the products.

Karen was reading herbal medicine books in her spare time and eventually it dawned on her that this hobby was never going to go away, so she decided to study herbal medicine formally. Now Karen is fulfilling a long-term ambition of working with herbs and combining this with her previous experiences and sharing this knowledge.

Fiona grew up in Dublin, where she enjoyed spending time outdoors exploring green spaces in the city and further afield, hiking and camping both in Ireland and abroad. She also enjoyed spending time at her Grandparents' farm in the Dublin mountains and summers in Wexford. Her parents were members of the Dublin Food Co-op, and her Mum was a pregnancy and breastfeeding advocate, all of which were positive influences in her life.

Fiona left her career in Finance after she moved to Scotland and started a family with her husband. Their third daughter was born at home with the support of an encouraging midwife, which was a tremendously empowering experience for the family.  Fiona enjoyed seeking natural remedies for her children and nourishing them with healthy food and time spent exploring and playing together as they developed.

During this time, she volunteered on the National Childbirth Trust committee in East Lothian and performed various other voluntary roles within her community. She was drawn to herbal medicine after visiting The Secret Herb Garden in Edinburgh, she found a wonderful herbalist, Joseph, who supported her and her family’s health. He encouraged her to look into Nikki’s course in Ireland.

 In 2018, she started the Apprenticeship course with Nikki, Alex, Majella and Siobhan in Cork, travelling over and back from  Scotland until the course was completed in 2020. She thrived on this course and enjoyed learning from the course teachers and fellow students who had so much knowledge and passion to share.

To fund her herbal training, Fiona studied with Jing Advanced Massage in Brighton and qualified as an Advanced Clinical Massage and  Sports Therapist in 2021. She also completed Yoga Scotland’s Foundation Course.

In 2021, Fiona completed the Wild Things 2 course with Grass Roots Remedies Co-op in Edinburgh and then began The Plant Medicine School’s Practitioner training course with Jane Wallwork in Exmoor. Over the past few years, Fiona has enjoyed organising events for Scottish students.

While she is completing the Herbal Practitioner course, Fiona works as an Advanced Clinical Massage Therapist in her hometown in Scotland. She is a mentor on the Plant Medicine School Scotland Apprenticeship course. She loves encouraging the enthusiasm and interest of the students on their plant medicine journey.