Green Path Academy: School of Herbalism is a family-run, hands-on school in the rolling hills of Coshocton, Ohio, created as a welcoming place for people to learn the art, science, and everyday practice of herbalism. Here, students are invited into a living relationship with plants through observation, sensory experience, thoughtful study, skilled hands, and time spent learning directly from the natural world.
Our in-person classes unfold within a beautiful botanical sanctuary of sprawling gardens, open meadows, and twenty acres of native forest. Students gather beneath an elegant open-air pavilion transformed into an herbal classroom, then move outward into the gardens and woodlands to meet plants where they grow. The landscape is woven into the education, offering continual lessons in habitat, seasonality, reciprocity, patience, and the long journey from seed to medicine.
Green Path Academy is taught by herbalists and educators Brandon Elijah Scott and Jenni Parsons, directors of Woodland Herbal. Their teaching carries forward more than ten generations of herbal knowledge within their family, shaped by home apothecaries, eclectic and folk medicine, plant growing, remedy making, and the practical work of caring for others. This lineage is honored as a living tradition—one that continues to grow through modern research, direct experience, careful observation, and attentive relationship with the plants.
Our curriculum is grounded primarily in Western herbalism, with strong Appalachian folk roots and an emphasis on practical, community-centered care. Students learn the traditional uses of herbs alongside their actions, energetics, preparation methods, quality, dosage, and suitability for the individual. Safety, sustainability, ethics, scope of practice, and respect for both people and plants are thoughtfully woven throughout the program.
The Green Path Academy Herbalist Certificate consists of twenty core classes and more than sixty hours of in-person instruction. Students may begin with no previous experience, attend individual classes according to their interests, or follow the complete pathway toward a certificate of completion. Each course is designed to build upon the last, guiding students from foundational understanding toward confident, responsible practice in the home, apothecary, garden, and community.
Coursework includes the foundations and history of herbalism; herbal first aid; medicine making; herbal energetics; materia medica; formulation; case thinking; safety and dosage; and the ethical practice of herbalism. Students explore the digestive, nervous, respiratory, immune, cardiovascular, lymphatic, urinary, endocrine, reproductive, and integumentary systems, developing a holistic understanding of the body and the many ways its systems influence one another.
Additional classes explore medicinal mushrooms, adaptogens, nootropics, aromatherapy, essential oils, botanical perfumery, natural skin and hair care, herbal gardening, invasive plant stewardship, harvesting, drying, storage, and the responsible use of local and abundant plants. Students work with teas, infusions, decoctions, tinctures, oils, salves, syrups, poultices, liniments, and other traditional preparations, with close attention to extraction, quality, preservation, and appropriate application.
Throughout the program, students participate in plant walks, medicine-making demonstrations, sensory exercises, guided discussions, formulation practice, and hands-on projects. Classes are warm, personal, and grounded, with space for thoughtful questions, shared observations, growing friendships, and the confidence that develops through direct experience.
Green Path Academy exists to return useful plant knowledge to ordinary people while honoring herbalism as a serious discipline, a skilled craft, and a relationship of care with the living world. Whether students come seeking greater confidence in the home apothecary, a stronger foundation for family and community care, a deeper relationship with local plants, or the beginning of a lifelong herbal vocation, they are welcomed wherever they are beginning.
The Green Path is an invitation to slow down, pay attention, work with your hands, and begin seeing the plant world with new eyes. We welcome students into this circle of learning with the hope that they leave more capable, more discerning, more connected, and more deeply rooted in the knowledge they will carry forward.