Medicinal and culinary plants have supported human health and culture for generations. Learning how to identify, grow, harvest, and prepare these plants is a powerful way to reconnect with the land, strengthen personal and community resilience, and cultivate practical skills for everyday life.
The Forest & Field Herbalism Program is a six-class, hands-on course that introduces participants to the fundamentals of growing, foraging, and preparing medicinal and culinary herbs. Through guided learning both at the farm and through activities at home, participants will develop practical skills for cultivating herbs, harvesting wild plants responsibly, and transforming plant materials into nourishing foods and herbal preparations.
Classes take place at CultivAction’s farms and urban gardens, including a site bordering the Morgan Arboretum—the largest forest on Montréal Island—where participants can learn directly from diverse cultivated and wild plant communities. Students will also gain experience using small-scale herbal processing tools such as solar dryers, freeze dryers, greenhouses, and sun ovens to preserve and prepare plant materials.
This program is open to participants adults of all ages and experience levels who want to deepen their relationship with plants. Whether you are a home gardener, forager, educator, or simply curious about herbal traditions, the course provides both theoretical foundations and hands-on practice to help you confidently grow, harvest, process, and use medicinal and culinary plants.
Engaging & Practical Learning
Interactive Learning & Hands-On Practice
Explore the world of herbs through dynamic presentations, demonstration of herbal products and practical, hands-on activities. You’ll gain valuable skills in planting, maintaining, and harvesting herbs, as well as kitchen-based preparation and small-scale marketing. Beside to active foraging from all the farm and the surrounding area the participants will establish and take care of a new herbal garden in the farm educational area. The participants will also have a chance to follow up the other participants activities in their own plots in the permaculture and the urban agriculture courses.
Collaborative Discussions & Knowledge Exchange
Engage in thoughtful discussions where you can share insights, recipes, and experiences with fellow participants, deepening your understanding of herbal practices.
Practical Application & Home-Based Projects
Apply sustainable herbal production techniques in your own space with guided home projects. Track your progress, refine your methods, and receive feedback to enhance your learning experience.
Knowledge Check-Ins
Reinforce key concepts with short, engaging quizzes designed to solidify your understanding—no stress, just a great way to track your growth.
Final Project: Designing Your Own Herbal Garden
Over the course, you’ll develop a personalized herbal garden plan tailored to your space and goals. You’ll implement your plan, present, share insights with peers, and receive constructive feedback to ensure success.
This course runs once a month on Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., from May through October. The schedule was chosen to accommodate participants using train and collective taxi services. Participants also have access to the farm during designated volunteering hours, providing additional opportunities to apply what they learn and gain hands-on experience.
Class 1: Introduction (May 23, 2026)
Class 2. Herbal harvesting and seasonality (June 20, 2026)
Class 3. Culinary Herbalism & Nutritional Healing (July 18, 2026)
Class 4. Herbal Preparations & Remedy Making (August 15, 2026)
Class 5. Herbal Preparations & Traditional Applications (September 12, 2026)
Class 6. Final Project & Wintering the Herbal Garden and Future Planning (October 17, 2026)
$450
(Register With a Friend and Both Pay Early Bird Rates)
$500 (after March 23, 2026)
As a fee levy contributor, Concordia University students can take advantage of our special subsidized rate and pay just $250 for registration!
Subsidized spaces are limited—register soon!
This Course runs once a month on Saturdays from May until October on the dates below from 3 PM – 6 PM.
The schedule chosen to accommodate participants using train and collective taxi services. Participants also have access to the farm during designated volunteering hours, providing additional opportunities to apply what they learn and gain hands-on experience.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Duais is a biologist, specializing in plant ecology and phytochemistry, with more than 17 years of experience in sustainability agroforestry and nature conservation. He has managed and involved in many projects and programs with agroforestry and food security components directly benefiting less privileged communities and smallholder farmers and their ecosystem, in Canada and the middle east respectively. Dr. Al-Duais has significant expertise in university teaching, project and NGO management, technical reporting and auditing, grant writing, products development, team supervision, and capacity building.
Dr. Al-Duais received his Ph.D. in Biology from Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. He served as an Assistant Professor at Ibb University and as the director of the Foundation for Endangered Wildlife (FEW), both in Yemen and was the Natural Science Specialist in the UNESCO Doha Office. He was a Fulbright fellow at the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory of the University of Rhode Island in the USA for one year. He was also reinvited in the summer of 2013 to the Institute of Nutrition, Friedrich Schiller University, where he continued the phytochemical investigation on less-used vegetables from Yemen ethnobotany. Dr. Al-Duais is currently serving as a Research Associate at the McGill Institute for Global Food Security. He is involved in the interdisciplinary research on global food security, with a focus on developing novel methodologies, with a comprehensive ecosystem approach, to tackling the cycle of poverty and malnutrition. Out of his research activities, many concept notes were submitted to partners and he is the CEO and co-founder “Harvest for Health Inc.”, a McGill startup focused on solving the globally increasing hidden hunger and its consequences.
Relevant to Dr. Al-Duais involvement in food security he is a member of the food literacy committee, under Montreal West Island Community Resource Centre, he is also the CEO of Permaculture Sainte Anne de Bellevue (PSADB), which is a nonprofit organization established by the “Moving Towards Sustainability” Fund of Sainte Anne de Bellevue municipality. Under PSADB he managed many agroecology urban projects including Duff-Court Neighborhood Life Committee urban farm and two other urban gardens in Montreal island, Canada.
The course will take place at several garden sites in St-Anne-de-Bellevue, as well as at the Senneville Farm. Indoor sessions—particularly in the event of rain—will be held at the Chantal Chalet in Parc Godin.
The Senneville Farm is located at 265 Senneville Road.
Please note that the directions provided here are based on those used by Santropol Roulant, a neighbouring farm.
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