Practice Focus

Clinical herbalism, medicinal plant cultivation and farm-based herbal education, botanical remedy making, yoga therapy and mindfulness teacher training, doula support, women’s wellness and menstruation support, sustainable floral design

Background

Nitika is a holistic wellness educator and founder of True Grit, an integrated ecosystem of True Grit Wellness and True Grit Farm & Flower rooted in regenerative practice and earth-centered learning. She brings over two decades of embodied study and practice, weaving clinical herbalism, somatic care, contemplative methods, and plant wisdom into supportive care for individuals and communities.

Her academic journey in Anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University centered on traditional healing systems and plant medicines. She trained in herbal medicine at New Mexico College of Natural Healing and Medicine Lodge Academy with Tieraona Low Dog, MD. Nitika serves on the faculty at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and is invited as a facilitator and educator in multiple training programs for herbalists and wellness practitioners.

She is also a certified doula and a member of the A Brighter Birth Network, with a passionate affinity for women’s health, menstruation support, and embodied rites of passage.

Offerings

• Clinical herbal consultations for root-focused support
• Seasonal and plant-based remedy consultations
• Farm-to-remedy workshops and herbal medicine-making classes
• Plant walks, botanical immersion experiences, and floral design with medicinal plants
• Yoga therapy sessions and continuing education for yoga teachers
• Doula support and women’s wellness mentoring
• Guest facilitation and training program instruction

Location

Richmond, Virginia
Herbal practice + plant cultivation at True Grit Farm & Flower 

Practice Focus
Botanical skincare, traditional herbalism, copper alembic distillation, and cultivation and education of medicinal plants.

Background
Rae Bellows is an herbalist, horticulturist, and Virginia Master Naturalist based at her farm, Wild Origins, in Powhatan, Virginia. There she cultivates medicinal plants, distills hydrosols and essential oils using traditional copper alembic stills, and crafts botanical skincare rooted in a seed-to-bottle approach. Her formulations are produced in partnership with Edgewood Apiaries. Rae has been a member of the American Herbalists Guild since 2017 and continues to learn through both formal study and long relationship with the plants she grows.

Offerings
Botanical distillation demonstrations, plant education, handcrafted herbal skincare and distillates, seasonal plant starts, and community herbalist support. Rae also works closely with other herbalists and small producers to help bring plant-based products to market.

Location

Powhatan, VA (and the greater Richmond area)

Contact
wildoriginsaromas@gmail.com 

www.wild-origins.com

www.edgewoodapiariesandfarm.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557837036957

Instagram: @wildoriginsbotanicals

Practice Focus
Community Herbalism and Education, Pain Management, Plant Cultivation, and Remedy Creation.

Background
Sara Jane is a passionate healer, educator, and entrepreneur dedicated to helping others cultivate vibrant, healthy lives. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Health and Exercise Science and has further expanded her expertise through numerous certificate courses in Herbalism and Nutrition. Over the years, Sara has shared her knowledge as an educator in both health and gardening, empowering others to reconnect with the healing power of food and nature.

With more than 20 years of hands-on experience, Sara has lovingly grown food and medicinal plants for her family, blending science-based knowledge with traditional herbal wisdom. Whether she’s tending her thriving garden or managing her busy household of six, she brings intention, care, and creativity to everything she does.

When she’s not nurturing plants or people, Sara enjoys capturing life’s simple beauties through photography and experimenting in the kitchen with wholesome, homegrown ingredients. A proud Virginia native, she treasures her roots and the vibrant, purpose-filled life she continues to cultivate.

Offerings
Plant friends, Herbal remedies, and Community education. 

Location

Richmond, VA

Contact
VivifyGardens@gmail.com

www.vivifygardens.com

Instagram: @vivifygardens

Nycol Chapman is a folk herbalist, medicine maker, and botanical perfumer, folksy, roaming, and deeply woven into the land. She grew up on a self-sufficient farm in the midwest with wild plants as her earliest companions and carried that love through years as a barista, cook and chef in Richmond's restaurant industry. In 2010, after becoming pregnant, she dove headlong into herbalism and never looked back. That dive was serious: books by well-known and lesser-known herbalists, online courses, herb talks from rockstar practitioners and beautifully obscure ones alike. Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus, read and reread over decades,  was the first herb book that truly got her. WindBlown Sister Botanicals was born in 2016, and the study has never stopped. It never will. Plants and their gifts, their wisdom, that's a lifelong pursuit, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Her practice is grounded in bioregional herbalism. The simple truth is that plants and humans have been evolving side by side for eons, trading gifts across that long stretch of shared time. The wise ones growing closest to us, know us. They've watched our kind move through seasons of abundance and scarcity, and they've shown up anyway, generous and unassuming, usually dismissed as weeds. She has spent years learning to delve into that relationship, sitting with plants, communing with them, sharing air and light and quiet. Sometimes that is the medicine.

She doesn't force connection where it isn't there, no matter how celebrated or trending a plant might be. Her core allies number closer to a dozen than a hundred, and she has come to believe that's more than enough. The land right here holds a profound bounty — for our bodies, our hearts, our spirits, our communities. Plant medicine is the people's medicine. It always has been.

She forages and spends time  with wild plants across several beloved landscapes: the wooded land she calls home part of the time in the ancestral territory of the Upper Mattaponi Nation near Aylett, Virginia — Sassafras, Juniper, Skunk Cabbage, Cleavers, Chickweed. The other half of the time she lives on the nearly two-acre property in Highland Springs on unceded Powhatan territory, where Violet and Sassafras are old friends. Then there’s Campbell's Muddy Hollow in Augusta County, Monacan Territory — thirty rolling acres of fields, thickets, woodland, and streams, abundant with her beloved Yarrow, Boneset, Motherwort, Bugleweed, Rabbit Tobacco, Queen Anne's lace, and more. She has recently taken her first humble steps into cultivated growing alongside fellow herbalist and extraordinary gardener Sara of Vivify Gardens & Apothecary. One more confession: she has a deep weakness for resins. Myrrh in particular has her whole heart. Some things just transcend geography.

When she isn't out foraging or at the medicine-making table, you might find her with a camera pointed at a plant, binding books by hand,  she teaches bookbinding too, as it turns out, or teaching her teenager how to cook. The through-line in all of it is the same: making things carefully, by hand, with attention. Sharing what you know.

Since 2018, Nycol has been leading workshops — connecting people with plants, sharing the bounty, and empowering folks to tend to themselves and their communities with the gifts that grow around them. She currently teaches medicine making at Apothec on Libbie Ave in Richmond, with plans to branch out to more venues soon.

This summer, she will be opening her studio workspace for private herbalism workshops with a focused, hands-on approach to medicine making. Expect tinctures, oxymels, balms and salves, body oils, botanical perfumes — and hydrosol distillations with Sarah Belle, her copper alembic still. If you've ever wanted to learn in an intimate setting, with time to really get into it, this is that.

Nycol is genuinely thrilled to be part of the RVA Herbalist Alliance. Richmond has long been home to folks doing quiet, serious, beautiful work with plants. The idea of being in Community with other herbalists and plant enthusiasts in this city and surrounding area, swapping knowledge, sharing what's growing, and building something collectively — that feels exactly right. Plant medicine has always moved through Community hands. She can't wait to get her hands in it alongside yours.

Katy Rugg is a Clinical Herbalist who found her way into connecting people with the plants and their gifts through her own meandering journey; growing up as a Quaker, she has developed her passions for deeper connection with other humans and the natural world through outdoor spiritual exploration, and formal study in French, Geology, graduate work in Intercultural Relations, and Urban Gardening and community programs in Boston, France and eventually, back here in her hometown of Richmond, VA. In 2017, she was honored to be a part of the inaugural Urban Gardener series, and shortly after left a soul-distressing job, allowing her to take a leap of faith to begin formal training in Herbalism (with Kat Maier at Sacred Plant Traditions in Charlottesville). When the pandemic hit, she went back to finish the 3-year program to become a Clinical Herbalist, understanding that the need was great to share the wisdom and generosity of the plants – who help us to return to our most authentic, and vibrant, selves. Katy loves to sing and write and be creative (especially in community), inspire people to live seasonally and in deepening relationship with the natural world. In addition to teaching workshops and gathering women, she has lately been delving deeper into the divine feminine, embodied practices of self-empowerment, and meeting with clients who are interested in deepening their relationships with plants to find greater vitality, joy and balance in this rapidly shifting world. She currently stewards a small patch of earth, as well as a small business called Petal Palate – dreaming up delights for our senses in collaboration with the flowers and the land.  She hopes to inspire humans to be more embodied in the moment, good stewards of the earth, and its human and other pollinators, in the process.