Herbs with Rosalee

Enrollment for my new online course, Herbal Heart Health, closes tonight!
In this course, my friend Rich Mandelbaum and I explore how herbs can support heart health, from high cholesterol and blood pressure to arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, and stroke recovery.
You’ll learn how to choose appropriate herbs for different people, understand lab work, and navigate herb-drug interactions with greater confidence, including questions about combining herbs with statins and blood thinners.
Rich brings years of hands-on clinical herbalism experience, and together, we’re giving these important topics the depth and attention they deserve.
We meet live on Wednesday evenings, with plenty of time for your questions. You’ll also receive lifetime access to all class recordings.
This first offering is available at beta tuition, the lowest price this course will ever be.
Enrollment closes tonight! If you’d like to deepen your knowledge of herbal heart care, I’d love to see you in class.
Enroll in the Herbal Heart Health course here!

What do you get when you combine a mysterious berry, a bottle with David Bowie on the label, and an herbalist determined to get everyone dancing?
In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Mel Kasting to discuss aralia berry (Aralia racemosa), an herb that I admittedly knew almost nothing about before our conversation! Mel fondly refers to aralia berry as “dance berry” because of its remarkable ability to help people feel more at home in their bodies and more connected to one another. She also talks about the many other gifts of aralia berry, including its ability to support people who feel depleted, disconnected, or weighed down by prolonged stress or grief.
Beyond aralia berry, Mel shares insights from her work as a clinical herbalist, including a powerful lesson she learned early in her practice about the importance of meeting people where they are. We also discuss the role mentorship can play in helping herbalists build confidence, deepen their understanding, and develop their clinical skills.
You can download the beautifully illustrated recipe card for Mel’s Life of the Party Elixir, a delightful mixture of aralia berry and other herbs, here. But be careful—it might just inspire you to get up and dance!
By the end of this episode, you’ll know:
► Why Mel sees aralia berry as a plant of connection and restoration, rather than simply another stimulating herb
► What makes aralia berry different from other herbs commonly used as social lubricants
► Why Mel prefers working with aralia’s berries instead of its more well-known root
► How aralia differs from its cousin ginseng and other adaptogenic herbs
► Where to find aralia in the wild
► Tips for growing, wildcrafting, and ethically harvesting aralia berry
► and so much more…
For those of you who don’t know her, Mel Kasting is a clinical herbalist, educator, and botanist with more than ten years of clinical experience. As Clinical Director and Free Clinic Manager at the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine, she oversees accessible community care and helps train emerging clinical herbalists. Her work integrates traditional Western herbalism, clinical nutrition, somatic practices, public health, and harm reduction.
Through Forest Edge Herbals, Mel offers consultations, mentorship, plant walks, and community education. In her clinical practice, she supports people navigating chronic illness, mental and nervous system health concerns, and mast cell and allergic conditions, including alpha-gal syndrome, with individualized, person-centered herbal support.
I’m so excited to share our conversation with you today!
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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com
Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.
You can find Mel at ForestEdgeHerbals.com.
For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!
Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.
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On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.
Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.
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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

Is garlic overhyped for heart health? You’ve heard it can help balance cholesterol, but does it actually work? And how do you use it to get results?
In this video, I explore how garlic works, why preparation matters, and what research says about garlic’s effects on cholesterol and heart health.
► Learn how crushing, chopping, or mincing garlic helps form allicin, a compound behind many of garlic’s heart benefits.
► Discover why letting garlic rest for ten minutes before cooking can help preserve allicin formation.
► Explore how garlic varieties differ in their allicin content, including why elephant garlic is different from true garlic.
► Review research on garlic and cholesterol, including findings from clinical trials.
► Learn what research has found about aged garlic extract and coronary artery plaque.
Garlic is just one of the herbs we explore in depth in Herbal Heart Health, my brand new course co-taught with herbalist Rich Mandelbaum. Learn to assess energetic patterns, read bloodwork, navigate herb-drug interactions, and choose herbs that fit the person in front of you, working alongside doctors and medications, not around them.
Enrollment closes October 28. Join us in Herbal Heart Health through here!

Hey friends, Rosalee here! I wanted to make sure you knew that I’m co-hosting a free webinar with my friend and fellow herbalist Rich Mandelbaum. We’ve teamed up to talk about 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart.
Sign up for the free webinar here: https://freeherbwebinar.com/
Heart health is one of the most common reasons people turn to herbalists, and chances are someone you love is thinking about their blood pressure, their cholesterol, or the medications they’re taking. There’s so much herbs and simple daily practices can offer the heart, and Rich and I are excited to share some of the ways we approach heart health that go well beyond the basics.
Whether you’re a practitioner, a student, or someone who wants to care for your own heart or your family’s, I think you’ll walk away with new ways of seeing heart health and plenty of practical ideas.
It’s free, it’s live, and there will be time for your questions. I’d love to see you there!
Webinar details
Topic: 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart
When: Thursday, October 22, at 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern

Sign up for the free webinar here: https://freeherbwebinar.com/
And if you can’t make it live, register anyway and we’ll do our best to get the recording out to you.

Hawthorn is one of my favorite herbs, and I get a lot of questions about it! In this video, I answer three of the most common ones.
Should you use the berries or the flowers and leaves? Can you safely harvest hawthorn from trees in your neighborhood? And what should you know about using hawthorn alongside heart medications?
We’ll explore different ways to prepare hawthorn, practical tips for responsible wild harvesting, and research on hawthorn extract used alongside conventional heart failure medications. I’ll also share why understanding the whole person is such an important part of the herbalist’s approach to heart health.
Want to learn more about herbal approaches to heart health?
Join my friend and fellow herbalist Rich Mandelbaum and me for our free webinar, 3 Advanced Ways Herbalists Work with the Heart, on Thursday, October 22, 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern.
Sign up here. If you can’t attend live, register anyway so you can receive the replay if it becomes available.