Our Environment, Animal Tips & the Great Outdoors

Hannah Schiller is a clinical, community herbalist and ecologist and owner of Foliage Botanics in Pine Plains, NY. Hannah believes that herbal knowledge and land connection is a birthright and that everyone deserves access to affordable, empowering, and supportive healthcare. 

What is herbalism, you ask? Hannah describes it as follows: “Herbalism is essentially the practice of using plants for medicinal purposes, making medicine with them, and using them therapeutically for illnesses and other issues and to nourish and promote vitality in the body.”

Though herbalism is perhaps not so mainstream in the United States, Hannah explains that people have been using herbal medicine since the beginning of time and it’s still the primary source of healthcare for about 80% of the world. “It’s part of everyone’s ancestry, regardless of where you come from.” 

Learning from the land 

Hannah has had a lengthy career in all things ecological. “I didn’t grow up with any plant knowledge or connection. I didn’t participate in farming or anything like that. I had a vegetable-out-of-cans kind of childhood,” she mused. 

She took an interest in plants in high school and while attending college, managed her college herb garden. But her interest in herbalism and botanics didn’t end there. “I knew that this was something that I wanted to do and it was what I was meant to do,” she said. 

Hannah went on to serve as a summer intern with United Plant Savers at the Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary. She attended Botanologos and studied under clinical herbalist Patricia Kyritsi Howell and attended the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine and apprenticed with 7Song, a well-known herbalist in Ithaca, NY. She also assisted him in the Ithaca Free Clinic. 

She also gained experience working as a gardener at a biodynamic herb farm, helping run a chronic and acute care herbal and foot clinic in the city of Atlanta, and working at a free clinic on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Most recently, she has completed the Advanced Clinical Program through Wild Current Herbalism. So you could say that Hannah knows a thing or two about plants.  

She started Foliage Botanics in the midst of all of her other work, but the business really began to take shape when she moved to the Hudson Valley in 2017. 

Services offered

Hannah’s business is focused around three main pillars: clinical appointments, education, and small-batch seasonal products.

Clinical appointments start with a one-on-one herbal consultation, which is a chance for Hannah to sit down with her patient and discuss their whole health. From there, they work together to implement a care plan and formulate a daily herbal formula and routine for their needs. “The role I play is simply holding space for people’s health journeys, listening to what they want, and helping them integrate herbs into their daily care,” Hannah explained. 

When it comes to creating individualized tinctures, Hannah takes a lot of elements into account, including her client’s entire health history, their primary concerns and symptomatology, their constitution, and the web of what’s happening with their overall health – including their mental, physical, digestive, and emotional health. 

She creates all of the individualized custom formulas from plants that she grows and gathers right here in New York and she has about 50 different herbs in her apothecary in Ancramdale. 

Hannah noted that she is not against pharmaceutical drugs and believes that they have their place, but that herbs are often overlooked as a viable support when more often than not, they should be used as the first line of defense. “I’m not anti-pharmaceutical medication, which I think is often a misconception about herbalism, and so that is never my approach,” she said. “But often in our mainstream medical system, those are our only options, and there isn’t a lot of discussion around simple lifestyle changes, diet, and trying out holistic alternatives when they makes sense. That’s where I see herbs being supportive and really having a place. They can be a firstline approach before going the pharmaceutical direction, they can be hugely supportive in lieu of or alongside them, and they can be a great preventative measure.” 

She teaches a lot of classes in the area and also online because she wants to “empower as many people as possible to have plant and land connection and to rebuild that lineage to their ancestors.” 

One of Foliage Botanics’ most popular classes is plant walks. They’re exactly what they sound like; Hannah walks around various public places in the region with people while she points out certain plants and explains their history, how to identify them, and their uses and functions.

She also teaches a class called, “Wild Medicine Ways,” which is a nine-month, in-person, hands-on bioregional herbalism and medicine-making program that meets one Sunday a month from March through November. 

“It’s a small, intimate group each year,” Hannah said. “We make medicine, learn botany, go on plant walks, and create a close-knit community where we’re focused on plant medicine and thinking about healing, our ancestry, and being ethical stewards of the land on which we live.” 

Hannah also teaches a winter botany intensive, which is a three session in-person program diving into winter woody plant identification. This year she’s planning on teaching a six-month online herbal immersion program that runs from October to March. “I want to reach people who are further away or who aren’t able to do a more active, in-person course. I want to welcome people of different abilities who have an interest in this kind of work.” 

In addition to these, Hannah hosts a variety of foraging classes and feasts, wild soda-making classes, and other herbal medicine and ecology focused classes. “When I first moved here, there wasn’t a lot of that happening. It was something that I wanted to do, so I wanted to create this community so that it exists for other people who want this also.”

Hannah also curates small-batch seasonal products that she sells in her apothecary. These products range from tinctures and oils to salves and teas – all of which are created to address various ailments and issues. 

Rewards

For Hannah, the biggest rewards of the business lie in witnessing her patients and her students educate themselves about the land on which they live and how they can use the land to heal themselves. 

Hannah referred to what is known as “breaking down the green wall” in herbal medicine, which is when people are able to walk into the woods and see more than just a big mass of green. They are able to effectively identify plants and their impact on the ecosystem. 

“Learning about and improving past relationships with the land changes people at the core,” Hannah said. “I think that’s the political piece to the work I’m doing, too. It’s hard to be a bad person and be in poor relation with the land when you have that intimate knowledge of the history. It’s very powerful to watch people learn and grow.” 

However, Hannah feels that we live in a society that doesn’t value herbalism as much, so that poses a big challenge for her and her work. “I think the unfamiliarity we now have with herbalism as a society certainly leads to folks not always fully understanding and appreciating its value,” she said. “People might wonder why they would even want this, why something is priced a certain way, or what benefits it really offers. A lot of my work starts with advocacy – just educating and explaining what it is and why it’s important.” 

A big part of Hannah’s work is also advocating for equitable access to healthcare, food, and nature, as well as the Earth as a whole. 

“Herbalism isn’t just a luxury product industry,” she said. “It’s about taking care of each other and the land, and finding worth in all living beings while standing up for their rights. We are reliant on plants to live, so this work is also inherently justice oriented and the education and advocacy work I do is very much about this, too.” •

To learn more about Foliage Botanics or book a consultation, visit its website foliagebotanics.com and follow it on Instagram @foliagebotanics to stay updated on its events and other ecological and herbal tidbits.