SANDPOINT — Curious about herbs and wildcrafting?

Cedar Mountain Herb School offers a combination of online and in-person classes for area residents looking to learn more about both.

Suzanne Tabert, founder of the school, is a bioregional herbalist and wildcrafter. She has been teaching for close to 40 years on plants, herbs and their habitats and said she has a lifelong passion to learn and teach others about natural resources.

Cedar Mountain Herb School has online and in person labs with topics from soap making, wildcrafting, herb gardening basics and much more.

North Idaho is all about self-sufficiency, said Tabert. That may involve wildcrafting, which is going out and harvesting plants. Tabert teaches wildcrafting by taking students out to spaces by the river, up mountains, by the other bodies of water where they learn about the natural habitats and plants in those areas.

“I teach them about the habitats and the community of plants that grow there and we delve into herbal medicines,” said Tabert. “I am more science based than anything else.”

She teaches about plants, constituents and what they do in the human body. As well as how to best extract plants and preserve the medicine or nutrients found. She also teaches biochemistry to wild plant walks to herbal intensives for specific plants.

Cedar Mountain School temporarily moved to an online format due to COVID-19. Tabert said she was saddened to close her school physically when the pandemic started, but the online format has made her lessons more available to a wider audience.

She reached out to colleges that were doing online correspondence classes and was able to design detailed presentations digital. Although it is not the same as being physically in class or out in nature, many students have taken the course more than once and the recorded nature of the online classes allows for students to re-watch the class.

“There were a lot of benefits to learning how to teach online [...] people can be in their own home, and feel safe, comfortable and possibly wearing their pajamas,” said Tabert.

Also teaching online is convenient for repeated study, Tabert said she is getting itchy to get students back in nature with students.

In addition to Tabert, Cedar Mountain Herb School also features Heather Bruno and Sita Tocco. Bruno, who lives in the Seattle area, is available online and in person and focuses on herbal remedies and wildcrafting. Sita Tocco is an certified Ananda meditation teacher and certified Ananda yoga teacher

Tabert said that her classes attract a wide variety of clients. She has had many nurses, doctors and other medical professionals go through her class in order to learn more about other types of medicines and for a more holistic approach. Many of Tabert’s students have gone on to own their own herbal business and have learned ways to keep themselves and their family healthy.

Stress and pain are two of the big things that people talk about, said Tabert. And so she does classes on herbal relief and lifestyle changes. She said that herbs are not the answer to everything, but can be helpful. She helps clients find out what their body needs by looking at their body as a whole.

There are times when she doesn’t even talk about plants, said Tabert. Sometimes her focus is on lifestyle and diet choices, water intake, tech use.

“There are so many things before we even delve into herbs,” she said.

For more information visit www.cedarmountainherbs.com