A woman sitting at a wooden table in a cozy kitchen, smiling and holding a colorful ceramic mug. She has long brown hair tied back with a floral headband, and is wearing a sleeveless cream top with a tattoo of a bird on her arm. She has earrings, a gold necklace, and a bracelet on her wrist. Sunlight streams through a window behind her, illuminating her face.

Hi, I’m Phoebe.

Thanks for being here!

How did I begin my journey with herbalism? Initially, it stemmed from experiencing intense grief, anxiety, panic attacks, ocular migraines, and challenging menstrual cycles, and not being impactfully met by practitioners in conventional settings.

I knew I had to figure out alternative ways to support my healing if I wanted less band-aid ‘solutions’, and more long-term effects.

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Thankfully, I was put in the path of some incredible plant people who helped open the garden gate to herbalism. Connecting with plants offered me some of the support that I was craving, and gave me greater feelings of safety while I deepened relationship with my body and tended parts that needed healing. I eventually landed at the VT Center for Integrative Herbalism, where I met my fellow plant-loving community. I learned that herbalism isn’t just about loving and building relationship with plants, but…

It’s about envisioning a deeper healing potential for the world through social justice, mutual aid, relationship tending, and reciprocity. It’s about working alongside the Earth and listening. It’s about holding grief, and celebrating joy!

I view herbalism as a way to build better relationships with the world around us - with our backyard if we have the privilege to access one, with our public parks and forests, our mountains, our oceans…

We can learn how to become better stewards of the Earth, and in turn be able to tend, harvest, and use plant medicine to support our own healing and the healing of our communities (which is all inextricably linked!).

Personally, some of my plant allies that I can’t imagine living without are calendula, california poppy, tulsi, milky oats, rose, yarrow, skullcap, and anise hyssop. I call on these plants as friends and mentors, and look forward every spring to welcoming them from their slumber or sowing their seeds so that I can enjoy their growth, delight in their blossoms, and then savor them in my medicines during the rest of the year.

There is something about honoring a plant’s life cycle that also seems to help hold my own evolving relationship with birth, life, and death. What a beautiful thing!

I chose to explore herbalism as a life path because I saw it as a way to support healing, while also bringing together a lot of my interests (art, gardening, energy, community building, making herbal medicine). I truly love what I do. Connecting people with plants and each other, unlocking ‘a-ha!’ moments, and feeling like I’m a part of something bigger helps to keep me engaged and inspired.

Many thanks to the plants, and to all of y’all. Let’s keep creating the world that we want to be in.

Listen to my feature on the Move Grow Rise podcast!

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Honoring My Teachers & Tenders:

Family + Ancestry:

Parents Marcelle + William (Marcey + Bill) Tucker, brother Eli Tucker, grandmother Beverley Greene ‘Lulu’ (maternal); many extended family.

Since passed: Esther Tucker (paternal), grandfathers Norman Vanasse (maternal) and Norman Tucker (paternal); Uncles Gene + Jim (paternal), ancestors from Nova Scotia, Finland, Saint-Bonaventure (P.Q).

Early Mentors:

Cas Cartwright, Katherine Elmer, Kara Buchanan, Guido Masé, Amy Seidl, Enid Wonnacott (in memoriam).

VT Center for Integrative Herbalism:

Betzy Bancroft, Linden DeVoil, Larken Bunce, Kristin Henningsen, Ayo Ngozi, Stephanie Boucher, Cedar Landsman, Laura Litchfield, Miranda Resnick, my entire cohort of inspirational classmates who give me hope.

Land, Water, Plants, Animals:

The land upon which I now live, the original and unceded land of the Abenaki people. [Learn whose land you live on here.] The waters in which I swim, drink from, bathe in, and which nourish all life; the local waters of the Branch Brook-Black River Watershed. [Find your watershed region here]. The plants and animals who feed and sustain me, and who are the protectors of land and that which is good in this world. The air that I breathe, the weather I get to feel on my skin, the seasons I am witness to, and the beauty and tiny miracles I see every day.

Credentials:

Early Education

  • Reiki II certified, Lotus Heart Vibrational Healing (2018)

  • B.A., Environmental Studies, University of Vermont (2017)

  • Healing Touch certified, UVM (2016)

  • Valedictorian, BRHS (2013)

Clinical Herbalist

  • 1300+ hour, 3-year certificate program completed through the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism (2024)

  • Internship program completion, Spoonful Herbals (2017)

Continuing Ed.

  • Client of talk/somatic/art-based therapy (bi-weekly)

  • Currently enrolled in Wellcoaches health coach training + certificate program (2025)