25 Free Herbal Resources To Help You Grow As An Herbalist

As an herbalist, I’m always gathering things, be they herbs, jars, or books. I’m also constantly searching for more information, various ways of using the herbs that grow around me, and the wisdom of those that have gone before me. While I purchase many things myself, there’s much wisdom to be found in the various free herbal resources available to us these days.

A quick Google search will reveal a plethora of information on herbs to weed through (pun intended), but today, I’d like to do a bit of the work for you by sharing 25 free herbal resources that can help you grow as an herbalist. These free herbal resources are in the form of online herbal texts, downloadable e-books, herbal research tools, curated herbal resources, educational guides, and more!

25 Free Herbal Resources To Help You Grow As An Herbalist

Books and Articles

1. 3 Old-Time Herb Books You Can Read Online – The Herbal Academy

Explore Nicholas Culpepper’s, The Complete Herbal, John Lloyd and Harvey Felter’s, King’s American Dispensatory, as well as Maud Grieve’s, A Modern Herbal—three books of old that were written during a time when herbalism and medicine walked side-by-side. These books are written by physicians and herbalists and include a combination of the scientific information known at the time they were written as well as folk traditions that had been passed down. They are a great way to see how medicine and herbalism once worked together and how herbs were commonly used during these earlier time periods.

2. 12 Things to Make with Dandelion Flowers – The Nerdy Farm Wife

If you know anything about dandelions, you know they like to show their sunny faces everywhere, so the next time your yard is full of them, gather them up and let this guide help you learn how to use them. This extensive blog post is filled with how-tos, recipes, and remedies that use dandelion so you can learn more about this great plant and make the most of your dandelion harvest.

3. 10 Things to Make with Calendula Flowers – The Nerdy Farm Wife

This extensive blog post pulls together several recipes to help you use calendula in your home. Use it for medicine, as a part of your cleaning, in your food, on your skin, and for your animals. Not only does this little guide offer many recipes for you to follow, but it teaches you a bit about calendula, how to grow it, where to get seeds, and how it’s used complete with safety information on the herb. This is a great way to explore one plant and get to know it well!

4. The Ultimate Essential Oils Guide – The Herbal Academy

Herbs and essential oils work very well together, but it’s important to make sure you’re using them correctly. This free guide can help you navigate through some of the very important topics and issues in aromatherapy. Learn some basic essential oils to use daily, how to choose high-quality oils, about essential oil safety, how to incorporate them into your herbal practice, and more in this in-depth guide to using essential oils.

5. Herbal Education Guide & Herbal Schools Directory – Plant Healer Magazine

If you’re looking to expand your herbal education and you’d like to know what options are out there, Plant Healer magazine has put together a comprehensive guide to the very best in herbal education that is free for you to view or download. This guide is chock-full of information to help both budding herbalists and those seeking to expand and find the best options in herbal education for them.

eBooks

6. 9 Familiar Herbs For Beginners – The Herbal Academy

This beautiful e-book explores 9 familiar herbs for beginner herbalists to know and use. Each herb is written in the form of a mini-monograph and comes with a single DIY herbal remedy to help you put the herb to good use. Each herb also comes with a few extra resources to help you learn further about each plant. This e-book is great if you want to explore one herb at a time, getting to know its information and uses, and seeing how you can apply it to your life.

7. Herbal Support for Cold and Flu Season eBook – The Herbal Academy 

Our kitchen cupboards and herbal pantries may just hold the secret to beating the bugs this season! There are many things you can do to prepare for cold and flu season and many herbal allies you can lean on to help you if you end up getting sick. We unpack some of our favorite cold and flu herbs, herbal recipes, and preventative tips for you in our free resource, Herbal Support for Cold and Flu Season Ebook.

8. Herbal Teas Throughout the Seasons – Free eBook – The Herbal Academy

We have taken our love for herbal teas and created this ebook filled with seasonal herbal tea blends to help you transition from month to month and from season to season. Enjoy!

9. The Mountain Rose Herbs Guide To Herbal Preparations – Mountain Rose Herbs (Herbal Academy students receive 10% off all MRH orders!) 

If you’re new to herbs or you’re interested in learning more about how to make good herbal medicine, this e-book is for you! It will teach you how to prepare some of the most basic herbal preparations such as tinctures, infused oils, herbal vinegars, salves, mushroom extracts, and more so you can get started stocking your herbal apothecary with things you can use to stay healthy.

10. Free Amazon E-books – Amazon (Search “books” for herbs, herbal remedies, etc. and then sort your findings by price.)

Did you know that you can download free e-books from Amazon? Yes! You totally can! This includes e-books about herbs, remedies, and other natural living topics. Simply select “books” in the drop-down menu on the search bar, type in what you’re looking for such as “herbs” or “herbal remedies,” and then click enter. It will pull up the available results, and you can then filter the results by price (select “low to high”) to see the ones that are free. Easy, right?!

Previews of Courses and Subscriptions

11. Free Introductory Herbal Course Lesson – The Herbal Academy

This is a free look into the Herbal Academy’s Introductory Herbal Course. Here you will receive a full lesson that covers information on herbs for men and women such as herb for reproductive health, herbal safety during pregnancy, herbs for heart and prostate health for men, and more. Our hope is that this will help you get a feel for how the information is presented in our online herbal courses in order to see if we’re a good fit for you!

12. Free Advanced Herbal Course Lesson – The Herbal Academy

Here’s another free lesson that’s taken directly from the Herbal Academy’s Advanced Herbal Course. This lesson covers information on general health and wellness such as managing stress, keeping your gut, adrenal glands, and thyroid healthy, and how to balance blood sugar levels with a healthy lifestyle. Enjoy this preview of the Advanced Herbal Course, and we hope to see you inside!

13. Herbs For Kids – The Herbal Academy

If you want to teach your children about herbs, this is the series for you. It’s full of information, all gathered in one place, that you can use to teach kids about using herbs. Not only will your child learn what herbs are, but they’ll learn how they can be used to keep the body healthy. Learn to grow herbs in a garden, harvest them from forests and fields, and enjoy their flavors in foods you make together. Remember, our children are the next generation of herbalists. Let’s start them young!

14. Free Monthly Trial of Herb Folk – Growing Up Herbal

In this free month of Herb Folk, you’ll be studying the herb ginger (Zingiber officinale). You will receive 4 weekly email lessons from Meagan Visser, the founder of Growing Up Herbal, and in each lesson you will learn one way that ginger can be used for wellness purposes. You’ll also get a weekly project to complete that will help you put your lesson to use in a hands-on way. You’ll receive a PDF download of all your lessons and projects at the end of the month so you can keep everything you’ve learned in a safe place.

15. Natural Herbal Living Magazine (Herbal Academy students receive 10% off of NHL subscriptions.)

The Natural Herbal Living magazine is dedicated to helping you develop a relationship with one herb a month by teaching you all about that herb through monographs, educational information, recipes and remedies, history, and more. You can sample this magazine subscription when you subscribe to their newsletter.

16. Sample Issue – The Essential Herbal Magazine (Herbal Academy students receive 10% off of TEH Magazine subscriptions)

The Essential Herbal magazine is a 32-page bimonthly magazine that shares educational information, herbal food recipes, remedies, herbal activities, wildcrafting, and more. It’s written by professional and hobbyist herbalists alike for anyone interested in using and learning about herbs. You can get this magazine in print or as a PDF download if you wish, and you can download a free issue to try out before you buy.

Downloadable Charts and Posters

17. Herbal Preparations Shelf-Life Printable – The Herbal Academy

Download our free Herbal Preparations Shelf-Life Printable for a concise look at common herbal preparations and their shelf life guidelines. Download, print, and store this chart in your herbal journal or on the inside of your bathroom cabinet (or wherever you store the majority of your herbal preparations) so you can easily reference it the next time you have a question about herbal preparation shelf-life!

18. Herbalist’s Vocabulary Cheat Sheet – The Herbal Academy

Communication is a vital part of herbalism. What you say makes a difference! Download the Herbalist’s Vocabulary Cheat Sheet to expand your herbal nomenclature with a dictionary of essential herbal terms to know.

19. Flower Planting Guide – Taproot Magazine

Download and enjoy this free, and might I add, beautiful, flower planting guide the next time you fill your garden beds with flowers for cutting and brightening your home. This guide is a free download from Taproot magazine.

20. The First Aid Garden Guide – Taproot Magazine

Here’s another free download from Taproot magazine, but this time it’s designed to help you know what plants (wild herbs and garden herbs) you can plant in your first aid garden. Plus, it tells you a bit about how each herb can be used.

Online Research and Learning

21. The Herbalist’s Guide To Botanical Research – Goldroot Botanical Medicine

No matter what your reason for researching herbs is, as an herbalist, you’ll be doing a good bit of it. That’s why it’s helpful to know how to find good research and where to find it. If you’re struggling with finding good herbal research, check out this PDF guide by Goldroot Botanical Medicine. It will teach you how to use research tools, how to sort through what you find, and how to analyze the sources. This is an invaluable guide, and it’s 100% free. Read it online or download it to your computer today!

22. Google Scholar – Google

Google Scholar acts as a search engine for scholarly literature whether it’s articles, theses, research studies, books, abstracts, court opinions, professional societies and more. If you’re looking for research on an herbal topic and you want to filter your results to only those with an authoritative focus, Google Scholar is a great place to start!

23. Free Webinars – American Herbalists Guild

If you’re looking to learn more about herbs and how to use them in your home or your herbal practice, you can enjoy these free webinars taught by well-respected herbalists on a variety of different topics. You have a variety of different ways to enjoy these teachings including watching the webinar as a video, listening to it as an mp3 audio file, or reading it via a PDF transcript. Just click the version you prefer, and it will automatically download to your computer or phone.

Facebook Groups and Communities

24. Plant Identification Facebook Group

If you’re looking to learn more about identifying plants in the wild, this free Facebook group may be just the thing you’re looking for. Simply snap a photo of a plant you need help identifying and get feedback from group members to help you positively identify it. Not only that, but there are also many resources in the files section to help you further your plant identification skills.

25. Edible Wild Plants Facebook Group

If you want to learn more about eating wild foods, this free Facebook group is a great place to start. This group is not for identifying plants (see the group above for that), but instead, it’s for finding out if the plant you have is edible, how to prepare it, and where to find more of it. You can also find folks who do edible wild food walks and classes, and the files section is filled with resources and recipes to use.

And be sure to help us out by spreading the word about this free resource by sharing this post on Pinterest or your Facebook page!