The Florida Herbal Conference Takes a Rest in 2027
After fifteen years of growth, we embrace a season of wintering.
Why We Are Pausing
After fifteen years of bringing Florida’s herbal community together, the Florida Herbal Conference is entering a season of rest.
As a small nonprofit, we have felt the weight of the last few years — rising costs, stretched staff, and the reality that producing a conference of this scale demands more than we can sustainably give right now.
So we’ve chosen not to host a conference in 2027.
This decision was not made lightly. Our team has poured years of heart, labor, and care into every gathering. But we cannot keep pulling from the same well without letting it refill. While the conference has thrived, the Florida School of Holistic Living — the roots that make it all possible — needs tending. Our trainings, workshops, gardens, and clinics need our full attention.
This is not a goodbye. It is a wintering. And like every season of dormancy in nature, it prepares us for what comes next.
Help Us Keep the Roots Alive—Stay Connected
🪷 The Florida Herbal Conference will bloom again. When it does, we want you there.
Drop your email below and you’ll be the first to hear about:
Want to support the school while we rest?
Every donation helps us tend the roots so the next bloom is stronger than ever.
And In Case You Missed Them…
Conference Recording Library 2012-2024 – Yearlong Access
Take home the Florida Herbal Conference! Enjoy yearlong access to over 410 hours of workshops, keynotes, and educational recordings from all 13 years of the conference, 2012-2024.
Join the Recording Library with one year access for $147!
Fifteen Years of Growing Roots
It started with a conversation.
Nearly twenty years ago, herbalist Emily Ruff sat in Rosemary Gladstar’s living room and confessed to feeling something every Southern herbalist knows: the loneliness of working in isolation. There were students. There were teachers. But there were no peers — no one who spoke the same green language, who understood the smell of fresh camphor or the sting of nettle from personal acquaintance.
Rosemary smiled.
“Well honey, there are so many herbalists in Florida. You just need to host a conference and bring them all out.”
A few years later, that seed took root.
Emily, Patty Coulton, and a small team from the Florida School of Holistic Living set out to create something new: a gathering built on learning, laughter, and kinship. In 2012, the first Florida Herbal Conference opened its doors. Rosemary Gladstar herself stood as our keynote. And what began as an uncertain experiment became a miracle — over 250 herbalists gathered on the shores of Mill Dam Lake in the Ocala National Forest.
Fifteen conferences later, that seed has grown into a garden.
Under the leadership of Maggie O’Halloran, Ricky Tree, and an ever-growing circle of staff and volunteers, the conference has changed shape many times. New venues. New formats. An unexpected pivot to screens and Zoom rooms when the world needed connection most. Through every shift, one truth held steady:
Plants bring people together.
In healing. In nourishment. In expansion.
We have watched babies grow into adults. We have seen neighbors meet neighbors. Community initiatives were born in the shade of live oaks. Projects took root over shared cups of tulsi tea. The garden of this community has blossomed beyond anything we imagined in that first year.
After fifteen years, we can say this with certainty: the Florida Herbal Conference accomplished exactly what it set out to do. It connected the herbal community of this bioregion. Deeply. Lastingly. In ways both loud and quiet.
And now, like any living thing that has given everything it has, it is time to rest.
Fifteen Years of Planting Seeds for Our Growing Community
