Join us for a slow, deep exploration of one plant ally each moon cycle.
This is a course for those of you who want to connect more with herbs... but without hurry, one at a time, with spaces to integrate your learning, leaning into your own senses & experience.
Plant Allies; 13 Moons invites you to get to know plants more deeply - not simply through 'receiving information from so called experts' but by making your own felt connections.
We will be your guides, but won't be your 'teachers' - we provide a lunar-illuminated roadmap to facilitate your self exploration of a herb each month, supporting you to grow your relationship with that herb, while also expanding your relationship with trusting your own knowing.
The ingredients:
the lunar cycle
a plant ally for the month following broader quarterly themes
reflection & journalling prompts for every week of the moon cycle - focusing both on how the moon cycle might be impacting you, as well as how you are connecting with the plant
a monthly guided community tea tasting online
an online community forum to share thoughts, experiences & resources
access to our sensory herbalism & remedy making modules to further inspire you on your lunar cycle journey
optional 'The Moon & The Menstrual Cycle' lesson for folks who are interested in that connection
Sign up to our waitlist to be the first to know about joining us for Plant Allies;13 Moons.
Want to join us? Our current cycle is now closed & our next intake is Spring 2026
Email hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk to be added to our waiting list to be the first to know when bookings open.
How does it work?
The Plant Allies course is centred around the stages of the lunar cycle - beginning each time at the Dark Moon, building up to the 1st Quarter, and the peak of the Full Moon, before winding down towards the 3rd Quarter and returning again to the Dark Moon.
For each full lunar cycle we will concentrate on only one herb - chosen in advance so everyone knows what it is and has time to get hold of it
We will work with a theme over each quarter (3 moon cycles) so we can transition slowly from one theme to another as the year progresses
The course is divided into the four stages of the lunar cycle. For each stage we will provide guidance for becoming acquainted with the significance of each part of the moon cycle as well as different prompts for meeting the plant, tasting it, and reflections for you to take forward in whichever creative style you choose
We find that for folk new to attending to the the lunar cycle, it can take a few cycles to become familiar with the ebbs and flows of the moon - you may wish to allow extra time in the beginning for this new acquaintance alongside your plant studies
As we near the Full Moon we will hold an evening online community tea tasting on Zoom. This is where we can come together and do a slow, embodied exploration of the plant as a group. We will record these sessions so if you miss it you can still join in later - the sessions are held in a way that for anyone watching the recording afterwards you can 'join in' by simply tasting your herb alongside the guides in the video
Around the waning Third Quarter Moon time, we will share our thoughts - to add our interpretation to your own experiences & reflections. We will provide a written monograph and also a video of the plant with an audio recording for folks who prefer to listen.
For those who've chosen to join us in person on Lauriston Agroecology Farm, around the Full Moon we will also hold a 3 hour in person Plant Ally & Nature Connection session.
We then slowly wrap up that moon cycle's learning with time for integrating new experiences & thoughts before introducing a new Plant Ally for the next cycle.
At Grass Roots Remedies Co-op we are passionate about making herbalism accessible. Many people may know us for our wild food & medicine courses where we delve solely into abundant bioregional plants that we can forage from our wild spaces. For Plant Allies; 13 Moons we include a wider range of plants, but still with a focus on abundance - this time from our kitchens and garden harvests as well as our hedgerows. So we will be including common easily cultivated plants, ones that we find in our spice cupboards, our supermarket shelves and our beloved native species growing commonly around us.
Whatever herb we are focusing on over each cycle, it's up to you how you would like to engage. You might want to buy the dried herb. If you are certain of the identification of the herb and know it grows around you, you might want to go forage some fresh plant material or harvest it from a garden- whatever you choose the lunar cycle will support you to deepen your understanding of the herb.
to further inspire & complement your journey...
Your monthly subscription to Plant Allies; 13 moons will give you free access to two full length modules that will deepen your herbal explorations. We have chosen to include these as we feel they integrate beautifully with the work of building a relationship with each Plant Ally. You can work through them at your own pace, and will have access as long as your monthly subscription is active. You will have access to our sensory herbalism and remedy making modules on booking. We recommend working through these two modules after booking and before the lunar cycle starts with our new herb at the dark moon.
Our Sensory Herbalism Module really complements the Plant Allies; 13 Moons lunar roadmap as it outlines suggested methods of connecting to & trusting our senses & experience, and using those to feel more in touch with the inner world of our bodies, as well as how we then relate to & experience the earth-body we live on, and the bodies of the plants. This module is an invitation to explore & expand our relationship to ourselves & the more than human world.
Our Remedy Making Module includes lessons on how to make herbal infusions & decoctions, oils, balms, creams, vinegars, tinctures, glycerites & syrups, as well as how to make tasty recipes out of our spring tonics & how to lacto-ferment them. We present these with videos of the Grass Roots Remedies team in our kitchens & at the farm as well as with downloadable handouts & further reading & resources. With all these preparation methods at your finger tips who knows where your lunar explorations with your herb of the month will lead you.
Plant Allies; 13 Moons phase 3 is launching at October's dark moon - 21st October 2025, and thereafter will run till December's Dark Moon.
Booking opens two weeks before the dark moon on October 7th's full moon, with complimentary sensory herbalism and remedy making modules to work through before the course begins.
Our monthly Community Tea Tastings will be on Zoom on Tuesday evenings 7.15pm - 8.30pm in the week between the First Quarter Moon & Full Moon of that cycle.
Our optional monthly in person sessions will return in 2026 when the days grow longer again.
Phase 1: Resilience
CYCLE 1: PINE (booking closed)
Sunday 27th April to Monday 26th May
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 6th May
CYCLE 2: BORAGE (booking closed)
Tuesday 27th May to Tuesday 24th June
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 3rd June
CYCLE 3: ROSE (booking closed)
Wednesday 25th June to Wednesday 23rd July
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 8th July
Phase 2: Release
CYCLE 4: VERVAIN (booking closed)
Thursday 24th July to Friday 22nd August
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 5th August
CYCLE 5: MILK THISTLE (booking closed)
Saturday 23rd August to Saturday 20th September
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 2nd September
CYCLE 6: DANDELION (booking closed)
Sunday 21st September to Monday 20th October
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 30th September
Phase 3: Renew the fire
CYCLE 7: THYME (booking closed)
Tuesday 21st October to Wednesday 19th November
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 28th October
CYCLE 8: GINGER (booking closed)
Thursday 20th November to Friday 19th December
Online Community Tea Tasting: Tuesday 2nd December
We will finish up our 2025 offerings at the dark moon approaching the longest night on December 20th, and begin our 2026 plant & lunar explorations in the Spring. Email hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk to be added to the waiting list.
It sounds great, but how much is it?
Sign up to monthly instalments of £15. If you want to leave the course, you let us know and we will cancel the rest of your monthly payments and remove you from the course. You can rejoin the course quarterly if you desire at any time in the future.
An extra £30 per moon cycle in addition to the online course fee.
For our two winter lunar cycles exploring Thyme & Ginger we are running the online course only. In person sessions at the farm will become available next year when it get's a wee bit warmer & lighter again.
I want to sign up! When do bookings open?
Bookings open for our last two lunar cycles of 2025 on Tuesday 7th October & close on Monday 20th October.
Signing up after October 2025: We will open bookings again at each quarter through the year for more folks to join. The next intake will be:
Spring 2026 - email hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk to be added to our waiting list!
Can I work through any course materials before the dark moon? Yes! As part of the Plant Allies; 13 Moons course, we give all students free access to our Sensory Herbalism module and our Remedy Making module - as we believe these will deepen your explorations with your plant ally of the month. We recommend students work through these modules while waiting for each lunar cycle to begin.
We also give you access to all previous lunar cycles, so if you are curious you can read/listen/watch our herbal monographs for Pine, Borage, Rose, Vervain, Milk Thistle & Dandelion too!
This course has been created by Grass Roots Remedies Co-op - 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 our garden at the Lauriston Agroecology Farm, and produce simple resources to enable folks to practice herbalism at home.
Find out more about us all on our website - www.grassrootsremedies.co.uk
Yes! Whilst you have access to the course you will be able to see all previous lunar cycles. This means that if you join the course in July 2025 for Vervain, you will also gain access to Rose, Borage & Pine's herbal monographs, video & community tea tasting zoom recordings. If you join us in 2026 you will have access to all of 2025 herb information and so on.
No, this is suitable for everyone ranging from those just beginning to form relationships with plants, to people who have been honing their plant craft over many years. The beauty is that while we will guide you on the way, this course is all about you forming deeper connections to each plant we meet. The connections made will be unique to each individual. So there will be gifts of insight personal to you for people of all levels and experiences.
Not at all. Each cycle we provide interpretations of the significance of phases of the moon for that week, alongside journalling prompts for observing your own rhythms alongside lunar rhythms. We have found that for folk new to lunar appreciation it can take a few cycles to get used to this, and we advise giving yourself some spacious time at first to get to know the moon cycle, as well as having time to get to focus on the plant ally of the month.
This part is really up to you - we suggest you will get the most out of it if you can spend 1-2 hours per week tasting the herb, writing any reflections and doing some reading around it. You may want to spend extra time making other herbal preparations with the herb too.
In addition to that there’s our monthly 1 hour and 15 mins of community herb tasting on Zoom, and the option to come along to our three hour in person session on Lauriston Agroecology Farm in Edinburgh. How much time you have and how deep you want to go is an individual choice.
In person sessions will resume in Spring 2026
2026 sessions:
We are excited to be hosting plant connection sessions on our home at the beautiful Lauriston Agroecology Farm in North West Edinburgh. These will be monthly, will be three hours long and will be an opportunity to delve deeply into the plant ally of the moon cycle with others. These cost an additional £30 & can be booked once you have signed up to the online course.
The Farm is accessible by public transport, and has cycle and car parking. https://www.lauristonfarm.scot/get-involved/visit/
A note about accessibility - the Grass Roots Remedies garden is not yet wheelchair accessible. The terrain is mostly level in our garden but the wider farm is on a hill, and there is a combination of hardstanding and grass. There is one step up to the GRR hut. There is an all gender accessible composting toilet. Participants who are able to arrive at the top end of the farm and walk down 10-15 minutes to our garden. If that isn’t manageable you can park at the staff entrance if you arrange to in advance.
The course has its own dedicated Discussion space, with a thread for each moon cycle where participants can share ideas, reflections and questions with each other and the tutors. There are also the Community Tea Tastings on Zoom, and the additional in-person sessions on the farm (the latter booked at an extra cost).
Depending on what the herb of our moon cycle is, you may already have easy access to them in your garden, local area, shop, or kitchen cupboard.
If not we can recommend Woodland Herbs in Glasgow (www.woodlandherbs.co.uk) as a reliable supplier of small amounts of herbs. Baldwins (https://www.baldwins.co.uk/) also has a big selection of herbs. Be wary of buying herbs online from unknown suppliers as they have been known to be adulterated i.e. not the herb you were expecting to buy. Buying from reputable suppliers also helps to promote sustainable harvesting and fairer wages for the folks growing the plants.
For each Plant Ally we will be clear about stating which part(s) of the plant are helpful to have, and ideas about where to get them from.
We will release the safety and sourcing information about each herb one moon cycle ahead to allow you to source the next herb in focus in plenty of time.
For each plant ally on the course, we have included a section right at the beginning of the cycle outlining any safety considerations for that herb.
If for any reason a herb doesn't feel safe or you just don't get on with it, then you can always use your other senses and ways of connecting with it without ingesting it.
Absolutely, there’s no need for any outside space at all for this. It's just about you and one herb per cycle, and you can connect with that plant in many forms and places, not just outside. If you’d like to connect with the plants outside then you are welcome to come and meet them on our farm if they are growing there.
We will be available to answer any questions via the discussions space of the online course. If you have a private question you can email us at hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk
We understand of course that sometimes things don’t just work out, or you might need to spend the money on other things. We want to honour these needs in our students, while also needing to have a functioning business model.
If you are paying monthly:
We can’t give refunds for the 1 month subscription, but you are welcome to cancel at any time by emailing hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk. Please do this a week before your next payment comes out so we can make sure we cancel your monthly payment to us in time.
We will however always be open to listening to exceptional circumstances. Any refunds will be minus a processing fee of a small percentage of the cost.
If you have paid for several months in one go:
We aren't able to give a refund if you have purchased several months of the course on booking. We will however always be open to listening to exceptional circumstances. Any refunds will be minus a processing fee of a small percentage of the cost.
If you would like to take a break from the course or leave completely, just email us at hello@grassrootsremedies.co.uk and we will cancel your future instalments and remove you from the course. Please email us at least a week before your next monthly payment comes out so we have time to do this for you.
No. If you stop participating in the course you will lose access to the course material. If you join us again in the future you will gain access to all the course materials for each past lunar cycle up to that point, including all the herbal monographs, videos and community tea tasting recordings for each lunar cycle (whether or not you participated in that cycle). You are welcome to explore these backdated herb cycles at your leisure.