The New England Herbary

Sturgeon Moon eclipse ritual: a full moon in Virgo, a partial lunar eclipse, and the old grain-harvest folklore that echoes it. This week we hold the second doorway of eclipse season with gratitude, not urgency.

"The sky doesn't belong to any one tradition. It just gets read, faithfully, by whoever's standing underneath it."

T...

Virgo season has arrived, and it's time for the craft of putting by. This episode covers calendula's uses in tea, skincare, and a step-by-step calendula-infused almond oil recipe for your fall and winter apothecary.

As the sun crosses from Leo into Virgo, the wheel turns from gathering toward keeping. We explore the old mythology behind Virgo — the maiden wi...

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): the herbalist's wound-herb, a plant of protection and boundaries, its folklore, medicine, and plant spirit — an eclipse-season episode. A grounded look at yarrow's uses for wounds and women's health, its old names and divination lore, and the psychic protection tradition that made it a plant of sacred edges.

There is a corner o...

Lughnasadh, the first harvest of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, has come — the season of the first grain, the first loaf, and the old harvest gratitude. In this episode, we follow the story of John Barleycorn, the centuries-old ballad of the grain that is cut down, buried, and rises again as the bread on our table and the ale in our cup — and we meet meadowsweet, the Queen of the Meadow, th...

Come and sit a while. I've just returned from eight days in Vermont and this week we meet motherwort — Leonurus cardiaca, the lion's heart — the fierce, unbeautiful, wholly self-possessed old plant that grows at the edges of fields and slips any garden that tries to hold her. She is the herb the old ones reached for when a heart was racing at three in the morning, and she steadies it witho...

Some of us inherited the apron and the herb bundle. Some of us inherited three thousand miles and a grandmother who was at war with the dandelion.

This week, in the deep hearth of Cancer season, we sit with the long thread — the women whose hands came before ours, and the strange and sideways ways the green world gets handed down.

There is a drawer in every house that remembers. Open it, and something rises to meet you — soap and sunlight and something older than both. This week, in the heart of Cancer season, we visit the lavender, standing at her fragrant peak in the July garden. We follow her long thread through history: the Roman baths, the washerwomen who were themselves called "lavenders," the London street sellers ...

The morning after the longest day, something turns. You can't see it — the garden is still roaring, still climbing toward its peak — but the sun has already begun its quiet journey back toward home, and with it, so do we. This week we cross out of the solstice and into the tender, homeward season of Cancer, walked across the threshold by lemon balm: Melissa, the bee-herb, the gladdening on...

It's the longest day of the year — and at the edge of every hedgerow in New England, an old guardian is blooming right on schedule.

This week, we sit with elderflower: the threshold tree, the doorkeeper, the one plant in the old hedgerow lore you never cut without asking first. We talk about her folklore — the Elder Mother who watches over her own wood...

This week, the queen of the solstice finally has her hour. St. John's Wort blooms right at Midsummer — and she's no ordinary summer flower. Come out to the garden with me and meet her properly: the little windows in her leaves that let the light pass through, the red oil that bleeds from her golden flowers like captured sun-fire, and the centuries-old ritual that turns her into "the sun in a bot...

"The garden you have is already worth returning to. Tend it well." Brenda J. Sullivan

In this episode of The New England Herbary, I share a small, unexpected moment from my deck garden in Connecticut — a hummingbird hovering at the edge of the hose spray, drinking from the mist, then coming back for more. That quiet visit became the sermon for this week's e...

Once in a Blue Moon: A Lunar Infusion for the Rarest Night of the Year

On the night of May 30–31, 2026, three rare things converged in the same sky: a Blue Moon, a micromoon, and an occultation of Antares — the ancient heart-star of the Scorpion. In this epis...

This week's episode is about my nine-day solo road trip to the North Carolina mountains and the Wild Abundance women's carpentry workshop — and I'm bringing the stories home with me. A bear at the threshold of a remote Virginia campsite. A cardinal singing at every window, every morning. A small brown bunny in an Appalachian garden. A circle of women under a timber-and-beam pavilion learning to ...

I was on the road last week when I recorded this episode. I was hoping to post this on Friday May 1st, but I couldn't make it happen. So it's a few days late and that's okay, because we've arrived at the great Celtic gate — Beltane, the fire festival that opens the light half of the year.

May 1st, with the sun newly in Taurus, Uranus freshly in Gemini, and t...

"For those of us navigating intensity — planetary, personal, or simply the wild energy of early spring — they offer exactly what Aries fire sometimes forgets to give itself: steadiness, and release."

The New Moon in Aries arrived on April 17th — and just the day before, the Sun and Chiron came together in a rare and potent alignment called a caz...

"Dandelion is the plant that will not be erased. Every attempt to remove her simply disperses her further — her seeds carried on the wind, landing in new places, beginning again."

April is a season of fire and contradiction — warm one afternoon, cold the next, full of urgency and uncertainty in equal measure. In this episode, we settle into the waning ...

On this Easter Sunday, herbalist and Celtic seasonal guide Brenda Sullivan invites you into the quiet of early morning — before the world wakes, before the day begins — to explore the oldest layers of this beloved threshold holiday.

In this special 50-minute episode, Brenda weaves together the ancient story of Eostre, the dawn goddess of the spring thr...

                        "You are not emptying yourself. You are making room. There is a difference, and it lives in the body."

In Week Four of the March series, we arrive at the Waxing Gibbous Moon — luminous, nearly full, and ripening toward the Pink Moon just days away — and talk about two of the most qui...

There is a small green plant growing right now along the edges of your garden bed, tucked into the damp shadow beneath the stone wall, pressing itself quietly against the base of your fence. Most people walk past her without a second glance. She is not showy. She does not announce herself. She simply arrives — every year, before anything else dares to — and gets quietly to work.