Leah Wolfe is the archetypal herbalist. You know the one, living at the edge of town with all the weird plants. A childhood in a village sandwiched between two national forests led to a lifetime study of the wild. Leah travels all over the U.S. to forage and learn about healing plants. In 2013, Leah started the Trillium Center in NE Ohio, an educational project for natural arts offering hands-on and online experiences in herbalism, foraging, homesteading, folk arts, and disaster preparedness. This blog is dedicated to Leah’s experiences as an herbalist and homesteader.

Leah’s background is in literary and health research, public health, and disaster response. Her obsession with herbs, art, and culture compels her to explore and cultivate folk art and folklore. Leah offers herbal assessments, forays, workshops, private classes and online education.

Health and healing are intrinsically connected to artistic expression and I hope to encourage people to integrate functional art and folk traditions into their healing process. The prevention of disease and injury are key to community health and resilience. 

I hold workshops and trainings on herbalism, preventive medicine and public health, healing with foods and herbs, first aid, disaster preparedness, and online learning experiences. I offer two comprehensive courses in herbalism, the 9-month Community Herbal Intensive, which starts every March, and the year-long Northways Herbalism course, which starts every November.

I hold classes and workshops on herbalism, foraging, plant-based dyes, creative gardening and cooking, and other folk and healing arts. Check the website to see what kinds of workshops are going on now.

I offer private classes and consultations, which are also available online.

The Trillium Center and the Botanical Sanctuary

On a ridge three miles south of Lake Erie in the quiet city of Conneaut, Ohio, there is a small sustenance farm, BLD farm, where seeds are being sowed. They aren’t just the seeds one would expect. Yes, there are carrots, tomatoes, and cabbage. But we’ve also planted less common things like high bush cranberries, northern pecans, and oaks that produce low acid acorns.

Stranger still, you will find a three-petaled flower deep in the woods that wraps its seeds in what looks like a pat of butter. Ants carry these seeds, three times their size, and store them in their underground tunnels as food for the colony and its queen. Thus the flowers spread slowly through the woods, unlike the mayapples and partridge berry dispersed by deer and birds.

That flower is called Trillium. There are two species growing here, the common white trillium, some which may be as old as 50 years, and the rarer red trillium that was given as a gift from a friend on the Medicine Council for the Lenape Nation.

Trilliums are at-risk of becoming endangered. As we work on this land, helping to restore the forests and growing gardens, we realize that the relationship between the trilliums and the ants is like the dream we are weaving of a place where people can come to find creation and creativity in the retreat from the buzz and the press of the cities. People will come here and carry away their own precious seeds and perhaps store them until the time comes for them to germinate and bloom into new projects and ideas.

The place is called the Trillium Center, an educational endeavor to improve community health and resilience through preventive medicine, education, wilderness skills, folk traditions, and more sustainable approaches to living. A place where people can learn folk arts through experiential skill building projects and workshops. The workshops will allow participants to create in a collaborative environment so they can apply these skills in their own communities.

We started a United Plant Savers botanical sanctuary in 2009 in NE Ohio where students and apprentices learn and practice wildcrafting and medicine making. The medicine gardens preserve native medicinal plants and allow participants to cultivate Earth-based approaches to health, wellness, and community resilience.

We built a small straw bale and cob classroom called the Seed House. The Seed House is primarily used for private classes and consultations.

Leah Wolfe and Charles Schiavone
BLD farm, NE Ohio

Visit the Trillium Center’s webpage.

Please contact us for more information.