A 2-hour lecture on designing and growing herbs in the Bay Area presented by Jaime Pawelek, a conservation biologist and gardener who specializes in pollinators. All proceeds support our scholarship fund for educational and clinic services for low-income community members.

Excited to grow your own medicine but don't know where to start? Then this is the class for you! You will learn the basics of how to set up an herb garden including: choosing the best location for your space, designing the best look and function of your garden, how to select herbs that will grow best in your area, seasonal care and maintenance of plants, and how and when to harvest your medicine. You will also learn about starting plants from seed, cuttings, or transplants. If you already have a garden, come learn about how to expand and incorporate more medicinal plants into your space as well.

Jaime Pawelek is a native bee biologist and gardener in Richmond, CA. She has been studying native bees since 2005 and loves teaching people about bees, as well as designing gardens for bees and other pollinators. She currently works as a bee taxonomist (identifying bees to species) at UC Berkeley, where she got her B.S. in Conservation and Resources Studies. Jaime spent several years traveling all over California (and Costa Rica!) studying the relationships between bees and their favorite flowers. She has given educational talks to Master Gardeners, Native Plant Society Chapters, Beekeeper Associations, garden clubs, and schools and she loves sharing her passion for pollinators.

Jaime began taking classes at Gathering Thyme in the summer of 2016 and started caring for one of the herbal gardens as part of her studies. Growing her own medicine has helped her expand her botanical knowledge and has given her a new love of plants for their nourishment and healing properties. Jaime has been gardening professionally for several years and specializes in growing organic food, cut flowers, herbs, fruit, pollinator plants, native plants and now medicinal herbs! She has been amazed to learn that most of her favorite bee-plants are also valuable medicinal plants, like California poppy, gumplant, and calendula.

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