The legacy of Herbal Educational Services, Medicines from the Earth, and the Southwest Conference on Botanical Medicine has taken root over the past three decades. Founded by Linnea and Larry Wardwell in 1993, with Ric Scalzo as an early contributor and mentor, their website BotanicalMedicine.org has nurtured the herbal community for the past 30 years by sowing the seeds of knowledge and connection across disciplines and modalities of clinical herbalism practice.
The first event was held in Ashland, Massachusetts, then moved to an extension campus of Boston University, which led to an island off the coast of Maine, then to venues in Oregon, and finally to Black Mountain, North Carolina, and the Sonoran University in Tempe, Arizona where herbal tradition and science are celebrated twice annually, bringing together a network of practitioners that now extends across the globe.