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What does it mean to be in relationship with the plants that flavor our lives?

In this Recipes & Rituals for Community Care session, gardener, artist, and flower esscence maker, Pepper Negron invites participants to gather around a vibrant table of world spices and herbs—plants that have traveled across continents and generations, carrying stories of healing, home, and care.

Through a sensory introduction to each plant, we’ll see, smell, and touch spices such as lavender, cumin, thyme, cloves, and rosemary, learning about their histories, properties, and the ways they connect people to land and lineage.

Participants will then be guided to create their own spice blend, intuitively mixing the plants that call to them. Toward the end, each person will be invited to name their blend and share its meaning—a small ritual of creativity and reverence.

What You’ll Experience

🌿 Meet and learn about a range of herbs and spices from around the world

🌿 Engage all your senses—smelling, touching, and blending each plant

🌿 Create and name your own spice mix to take home

🌿 Reflect on the stories and sensations each plant carries

Your Facilitator: Pepper Negron

Pepper has been a gardener since 2019, beginning at governors island and later tending community gardens, cultivating and maintaining healthy, beautiful outdoor spaces. skilled in landscaping and garden design, Pepper is dedicated to continuous learning and has earned certificates in farm apprenticeship, soil health, tree and garden pruning, botany, eco-gardening, agriculture and horticulture training, and master composting. His specialty and greatest interest lie in medicinal plants, spices, and edible flowers.

Join us for Recipes and Rituals for Collective Care every Wednesday!

What does it mean to heal in community? What does it feel like when we extend care to ourselves and the collective? How do plants and our local ecologies care for us? How can we care for the plants and local ecologies in return?

Weave in rituals and recipes into your own self-care and community care practices through weekly explorations in herbal arts, somatic movement in the greenhouse and garden, folk remedies, and other wild-crafts and meditative activities that foster a deeper connection to plants to care for the body, mental health, and the people you move with.

Each week, be guided by a guest herbalist, healing artist, or wellness practitioner who will help you create your own toolkit and apothecary for self and communal care.

This is a free drop-in program. Come to every class to build on your skill or come to one or two that you are available for. Explore your relationship to food and agriculture and the ways our food systems can connect us more deeply to our local ecosystems and communities.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.