Join us for a wild medicinal herb workshop, find all-natural herbal products and learn about life in America’s Great Boreal Forest

Welcome to 2010 and a New Decade Filled With Promise!

See our new Pix and the 2010 Schedule! Read a new
Essay about a serious challenge to the Superior
National Forest's (and Giving Ground's home)
environment! Get info about herbs and the Flu!

Happy New Decade! The year (and the decade!) has turned,
and the Christmas morning snow is still all prom dresses
and petticoats and crinoline slips on the evergreens.

Yesterday a pileated woodpecker came swooping right into
the yard, to the trees by the living room window! That
enormous, scarlet red crest and the length of body, at least
18 inches: those birds always look like something out of
"Alice in Wonderland"! I stood at the living room window and
just drank in his presence so close in the yard.

We are on snowshoes out on the trails, now, to collect the winter herbs for salve and tincture making. Of course I have snowshoes here for everyone, if you don't have a favorite
pair already, that you bring with you. And through the years I have had several guests who were on snowshoes for the first time here, and who loved the feeling of slow grace way above the ground; they took pictures home, of our crocheting our way along the trails, and almost without exception, they bought snowshoes when they got home.

Giving Ground continues to accept applications for Herbal Apprentices (see below).

The 2010 schedule of weekend and week-day programs/workshops/retreats is up now. Feel free to phone me if there is a date or particular topic focus that you don't see there. Often I can accommodate different days/different topic focus in between the scheduled programs.

Gift certificates are always available. Half-day at $50, full day at $85, weekend or equivalent time at $329. They make wonderful gifts; Certificates are written by hand with calligraphic pen on fine paper, rolled and tied with a ribbon, and mailed in a small shipping roll. The dates are not filled in, so that the gift recipient can negotiate with Giving Ground, the season, dates, and topic focus that work best for him or her.

I continue to do herbal consultations, and often guests ask me, aside, what I would suggest for this or that health challenge. I just presented a Continuing Education credit-hour at the University of Minnesota at Duluth Student Health Center for the doctors, nurses, and counseling staff there. The topic they requested I address was Sleep Disturbances. We had a cup of herbal tea, and I said, "If you are all sound asleep at the end of the hour, I'll have been a great sucess!" But sleep disturbances, which include menopausal night sweats, are one of the many challenges we can address while you're here, if you like.I hope you'll email me (info@givingground.com) with questions and your thoughts about the importance of herbal medicine in our lives.

HERBAL APPRENTICESHIPS CONTINUE AT GIVING GROUND

After a very successful year during which Giving Ground hosted three wonderful apprentices, I am extending an invitation to you to consider applying for a herbal apprenticeship in 2010. Read more ...

ENJOY OUR LATEST PICTURES AND ESSAYS

NEW: Click here to view some pix of Giving Ground after the 2009 Christmas snowfall.

Several people have emailed me regarding medicinal herbs and the flu.

I'd suggest boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) - this isn't the similar-sounding comfrey or "knit-bone." Boneset is a close relative of Joe Pyeweed or "Gravel Root"- both are eupatorium - NOTE: this is used only for healing a viral infection - not as a preventative - Boneset is hugely anti-viral and anti-bacterial and will also bring down a fever and check a cough, which (cough) seems to be a symptom on the news of H1N1. Read more ...

"The Kitchen Cabinet" (at this very political time) - or - Kitchen Herbs:
Ancient Winter Medicine: We think of herb and food combinations, such as "salmon and dill" or "lamb and mint," with familiarity and possibly with nostalgia for our mothers' "Sunday cooking". But truly, such combinations of kitchen herbs and meat, fish or poultry had their ancient roots in very practical biology. Read more …

A Sense of Wonder: May I propose that children aren't born with a sense of wonder? And if they are very lucky, they may acquire one by their middle 30's? I think we are born bored … Read more

READ ABOUT GIVING GROUND'S VERY FAMOUS BOREAL FOREST TRIPLE ANTIBIOTIC OINTMENT AND ITS TRAVELS TO AFRICA AND CENTRAL
AMERICA!

Calling the Circle: In mid-winter here, a nurse at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Student Health Services asked me if I would consider packaging up 50 small pots of my winter-made, wild-herb Boreal Forest Triple Antibiotic Ointment (see my herbal store, this website), for her medical team to take on a volunteer medical mission to Kenya, to isolated, outlying communities there. The University's health clinic has had …. Read more

UPDATED: CHECK OUR 2010 WORKSHOP & RETREAT SCHEDULE

VISIT OUR NEW HERBAL REMEDIES STORE: Giving Ground's Herbal Remedies

NEW RECIPES: Special Herbal Teas Rose Hip Cordial

WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE OUR OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER?

Send an email to info@givingground.com and we'll put you on our list. We'll be happy to send it to you as an email or by "snail" mail. Let us know how you want to receive it.

Have a Giving Ground Wild-Herb Adventure and learn to think like an
herbalist!

Giving Ground is an 80-acre forested herbal retreat in the
Superior National Forest, 60 miles north of Duluth,
Minnesota. At Giving Ground you'll learn to identify,
choose and prepare medicinal plants for yourself,
your family and friends.

You'll feel, taste and learn about the therapeutic properties
of herbs that not only grow in America's great boreal forest
but often in your own backyard.

For thousands of years, people the world over have
used wild herbs as food, medicine and cosmetics.
The native peoples of the boreal forest, and the immigrant
homesteaders after them, had to learn what the stony,
stubborn lands provided for food and medicine.

Our forests offer us a wealth of hardy plants and trees.
Compounds from their roots, leaves, flowers and berries
have been used for centuries to nourish, support, comfort
and heal.

Today, knowing about wild herbs and how they can help us is especially important; we are all concerned about the safety of the drugs we take, the food we eat and the cosmetics we use. Every day at Giving Ground we field questions about which herbs can help promote healing, maintain wellness, improve the food we eat and enhance our skin as we mature.

Our website offers information about Giving Ground's year-round workshops, our all-natural herbal remedies and what we've been thinking lately about herbs and life. We hope you'll stop by often:

-- Click here to learn about attending a Giving Ground Herbal Retreat or Workshop.

-- Click here to find all natural herbal products in our online store.

-- Click here to gather an herbal recipe or two.

-- Click here to read about life in this wonderful wilderness region of Minnesota..