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Betzy Bancroft is a co-founder, teacher, and student clinic mentor at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, and a clinical herbalist through VCIH’s professional clinic. She lives next door to Sage Mountain, and is now teaching in-person classes there as well. Betzy serves on the United Plant Savers’ Advisory Board. Betzy just published a book, Herbal Pharmacy: the Science and Magic of Preparing and Administering Plant Medicine (Chelsea Green), a comprehensive textbook on medicine making.
We previously interviewed Betzy for the Autumn 2012 newsletter (see below). Let's catch up with Betzy on what she is doing now.
Please talk about how VCIH was created and the services it provides.
VCIH grew out of the advanced apprenticeship at Sage Mountain and a free herbal clinic that herbalists who completed that course had started in Barre, VT. It was originally an effort to make accessible herbal consultations more sustainable for the practitioners and clients alike by connecting the clinic to an educational program. Rosemary Gladstar, my former neighbor who founded Sage Mountain Herbal Retreat Center and Botanical Sanctuary, ran an advanced apprenticeship, which ceased around the same time we developed VCIH in 2006-07. Today, VCIH has grown and evolved, currently offering a basic, in-person Roots Apprenticeship which covers gardening and home remedies, and a Family Herbalist course online which includes more background sciences like physiology, botany and actions & chemistry as well as herbal approaches to common health concerns. We offer an online two-year Clinical Herbalist program as well, which covers deeper understandings of herbal pharmacology, nutrition and safety and culminates in students practicing in our supervised herbal clinic. Several of the faculty also participate in a Professional clinic, and currently all of our clinical services are online. VCIH also offers many individual classes taught by both advanced students and other herbalists live online and through our website.
When we spoke in 2012 you mentioned that your favorite part of your previous job at Herbalist & Alchemist was education, which has become an even larger focus for you. Tell us about your various teaching roles.
I really do enjoy teaching herbal medicine, nutrition and the preparation of remedies. To me there isn’t any separation between our food and our medicine, and creativity in the kitchen. VCIH switched to a mostly online format in 2020, and I find teaching in person much more interesting and fulfilling than online (talking to my computer), which is one reason my neighbor Emily Ruff and I are organizing more classes in person at Sage Mountain. I also love to give herb walks, so we host “Day on the Mountain” herb walks at Sage on occasional Saturdays to support local folks’ connection with nature. Fortunately, in person herbal conferences are happening again too, and I will be presenting at two herb conferences later this summer and again next summer. Even the book events that come with the territory of being a new author have been structured as mini classes on herbal tea brewing and an opportunity for questions. My favorite new project is beginning to prepare an intermediate-level apprentice program to be offered in 2027 at Sage Mountain. Generally speaking, one of the things I love most about teaching is the opportunity to continue learning. Every time I teach a new subject or class, I study new material, which keeps it all fresh and exciting.
How does the foundation you developed training with David resonate through your work today?
Much of David’s course is materia medica, so I have a good knowledge of many different plants. Especially, back when I was a student (1987-1989) we went on a lot of herb walks, so my plant ID skills are particularly strong, and this has served me well giving my own herb walks. I also appreciate the foundation in energetics, the Elements and Qualities, that I gained in his program because I teach and practice from this framework.
Please tell us about Herbal Pharmacy, how you came to write it, what it contains, and the impact you hope it is having.
I wrote Herbal Pharmacy because I needed a more complete and detailed textbook for my medicine-making classes. As I say in the introduction, my decades of experience teaching medicine-making have given me a ton of background on what questions students ask, and how to explain concepts like weight-to-volume clearly. This experience prompted me to include photographs, step-by-step instructions with deeper explanations to meet the different learning styles that people have, or the different ways people take in information. So Herbal Pharmacy goes into great detail on the key concepts relevant to preparing remedies, such as surface area, time, temperature and solubility. Each chapter discusses a different menstruum, or solvent liquid in detail, and then covers types of extracts in that liquid, from simple folk-method preparations up to more complicated remedies like emulsions and elixirs. There are recipes, but my primary goal is to explain how to create one’s own recipes, with lots of troubleshooting and safety information to give people confidence to do so.
My hope is that Herbal Pharmacy will give many more people the understanding, tools and confidence to make more plant medicine, whether for culinary use like herbal infused oils and vinegars to very precise and effective tinctures. The administration section covers dosage and other practical information on applying remedies, so again I’m hoping to answer herbalists’ questions about using plants for medicine.
This is a question we ask all of David’s former students we interview that was added after your previous interview. What is/are your favorite H&A product(s) and why?
I have long appreciated Bitters Compound and now the variations on that original product. I guess my favorite product is the hawthorn solid extract. I got a fresh jar of it when I visited the new production facility in May. It’s potent, convenient and tasty.
Betzy Bancroft, like many of David’s students, has an amazing track record of doing fascinating things with her love of herbs. One of David’s earliest students and a former employee of H&A, she is a teacher and practitioner, as well as using her business experience to help run pivotal organizations. Betzy divides her time between two non-profit organizations: she is currently office manager of United Plant Savers as well as a faculty member of the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. She lives next door to Sage Mountain on a beautiful mountainside.
What motivated you to become a clinical herbalist?
I’m not sure I ever actually made a decision to become a clinical herbalist. I had been drawn to nature and plants all my life, and got interested in their medicinal uses when I was in college and unhappy with doctors’ care. After college I met David and started his herb studies course, which is clinically oriented. Helping people came out of my compassionate nature and ‘with the territory.’
After you studied herbs formally under David Winston beginning in 1987, including two graduate courses, you then stayed on as an assistant instructor. How did teaching continue your herbal training?
Teaching and practicing are both great ways to keep learning! One must study and research to write more advanced curriculum, which is much more relevant to my role on the faculty at Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. I only taught basic subjects for David’s program, but now I teach not only advanced, clinical curriculum, but also information on the cutting edge of research, such as gut microbiota. Need to keep abreast of a lot these days!
My study with David gave me an excellent energetic worldview and comprehensive understanding of materia medica (the herbs). In those days we went for lots of herb walks, so my ID skills are also great, and I love to give herb walks. My experience in David’s classes and working for Herbalist & Alchemist has given me a really solid foundation to be a co-director, core faculty member and clinical herbalist at VCIH. As the school and clinic grow, I draw on even more of my skills, like planning herbal extract production and guest lectures.
At David’s school I taught medicine making, and now at VCIH I teach the advanced medicine making course in the second year of the program. The students’ medicine show is always amazing, one of the highlights of my year.
In your 16 years at Herbalist & Alchemist as a staff herbalist and general manager, what was your favorite part of the job?
My favorite part of the job had to do with education—helping to write the initial versions of the Specific Indications guide and later doing classes for health food stores and other customers.
Does your formal herbal training assist you in your job as office manager for United Plant Savers?
It’s really a lot more than my herbal training that assists me in my office manager job. I use all the skills I learned managing the office at H&A including computer, customer service, keeping organized. Perhaps especially my experience with the herbal products industry generally, and botanical raw material supply specifically, have been key.
At UpS, I help people with a wide range of questions and issues, from identifying plants by photos to where to market the herbs they grow. I also write and organize educational materials for UpS, like the Botanical Sanctuary Resource Guide. It is partly my experience as a clinical herbalist, but really my office manager job draws on my very wide-ranging experience, since I am not answering questions for people about what they should do for their health at UpS.
Over your many years teaching herbal medicine have the interests and backgrounds of students changed? How?
I think more people are interested in herbal medicine. The focus has shifted more to helping others, especially people without access to medical care and in emergency situations (several of my students are street medics at political protests). A lot of younger people are studying herbs, but it’s still mostly female. I also see more herbalists interested in science, getting beyond folk use of herbs to a more complete understanding of the human body, plant chemistry and energetic theory.
I am excited for contemporary American herbalists... We manage to maintain our great diversity and eclecticism while very much opening our perspectives to science, multicultural traditional theory, clinical trials... A good blend of old and new. Our profession is connected, cross-pollinating and gaining respect. My primary focus these days is the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, which is a non-profit educational organization encompassing a school of herbal medicine and a sliding-scale clinic. I invite you to visit www.vtherbcenter.org. We really have an awesome mission.
