Jade Alicandro weaves a love of bioregionally abundant herbs and kitchen medicine into her work as a community and clinical herbalist.
She started studying herbs formally in 2005 and has been intertwined with them ever since. She has a background rich in botany and plant ecology, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and the Vitalist Tradition of herbalism, and brings this diversity and breadth of knowledge to her teaching and clinical practice. Her work as an herbalist revolves around self and community empowerment, food as medicine, accessibility, community resilience, folk medicine-making, locally abundant plants, and the sharing and spreading of herbal knowledge. She’s been in clinical practice since 2012 and currently sees client all around the country over phone and zoom and makes her home in the rolling hills and valleys of western Massachusetts She lives in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts on the traditional lands of the Nonotuck, Nipmuc, and Pocumtuc peoples.
Education is at the heart of her work and Jade teaches herbalism avidly throughout the northeast and leads a year 1 and year 2 apprenticeship program in bioregional herbalism, From the Roots Up, and hosts seasonal herb walks and workshops throughout the year. In the online classes realm, she offers a kitchen herbalism course each winter, Spice Rack Medicine, and hosts a membership program, Viriditas.
Her writings have been published in the Journal of the Northeast Herbal Association (NEHA), the Herbstalk blog, the Botanical Anthology, the Birthing Mama online holistic pregnancy program, Loam Magazine, Plant Healer Magazine, Herbaria Monthly, Aromaculture Magazine, and the Birth Institute's Birth Wisdom Blog. She has taught at conferences including the American Herbalists Guild Symposium, Northeast Permaculture Convergence, Radherb, Herbstalk, and the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) summer and winter conferences. From 2012-2019 she ran the Greenfield Community Herbal Clinic, a low-cost clinic dedicated to accessible herbal care. She has been an herbal educator with Herb Pharm since 2015.
When she’s not teaching or working with clients, you can often find her roaming the hedges with her harvest basket in-hand or at home in the kitchen brewing-up some potent food as medicine. She’s a mother, tender of a menagerie of animals (including chickens, goats, kittens and beloved family pup), lay naturalist, avid forager, and half-gardener to her mostly wild gardens. Deeply inspired by ancestral herbalism, she draws on the wisdom and traditions of her Southern Italian and Greek ancestors and carries this lineage forward in her personal herbal practice, cooking, and celebration of seasonal and earth-based rhythms. A perpetual lover of the weeds/misunderstood/so-called “invasive” plants, her current favorite herbs are Wild Rose (Rosa multiflora), Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) and Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale).
Education
Jade has completed a 2 year training in Clinical Herbalism at Clearpath School of Herbal Studies, and is also a graduate of Blazing Star Herbal School, The Gaia School of Healing & Earth Education, the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine, FEAST Permaculture Design Certification, and the Goldthread Apothecary Clinical Herbalism 200 hr Training. She has also completed advanced clinical training and a clinical mentorship at the Commonwealth Center for Holistic Herbalism. She holds a B.S. in Plant Biology and a B.S in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.