10 | SUMMER 2026 EDIBLE CENTRAL OREGON Many of us have formative experiences at age 18. For Bend native Laura Parker, hers sent her on an exploration that has become part of her life’s work. Seeking relief from an ear infection, she was prescribed painkillers that made her violently ill. She began to wonder what remedies she could find in nature, and she has been working with plants ever since as founder of Green Witch Next Door. What are your primary offerings? My main focus is empowering girls and women through the Wise Woman tradition, especially through the lens of Wise Woman herbalism, which focuses on nourishment as a main path to healing and wholeness. I teach herbal classes, herbal mentorships, herbal fertility, and prenatal and postnatal classes. This year, I am offering an herbal teen apprenticeship. I also do herbal consultations, working one-on-one with specific health issues, both acute and chronic, and I help people find ways to add more nourishment from plants to ease or heal the problem. I not only love to wild forage for food that grows around us, I also love sourcing food from local farmers and then offering a small picnic in the middle of a class to help connect the community with where their food comes from. I think people are much more likely to change the way they think about food when they are eating something delectable and nourishing that has been prepared with creativity and love. What do you most enjoy about what you do? I love that the homesteading and herbalism communities are embedded in a way of life that nourishes everything a person could possibly want: organic foods, connection with nature, medicine that we can make ourselves. I have so much less anxiety about sickness because I can make the remedies myself, the plants are a part of my community, and they are always there for me. I dig roots out of the dirt in the sunshine or the rain; it is common for me to do things like move snow off of a sage bush at 2am to pick its leaves for a cup of tea to give to a coughing kid. The cough stops, I go back to sleep, and it’s like magic. The word witch has a loaded history. How are you reclaiming this lineage? The witch is a powerful female archetype. Before she was demonized and turned into a scary Halloween character, the witch represented the power of nourishment, healing, and midwifery. GREEN WITCH NEXT DOOR Laura Parker uses herbalism to heal what ails us Photo courtesy of Green Witch Next Door
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