‘Like learning a new language.’ Proctor business owner teaches plant foraging
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- Hawthorn and Honey owner Sara Butters leads seasonal foraging classes.
- Students learn to harvest medicinal plants and craft tinctures, oils, honeys and vinegars.
- Attendees describe benefits of being in nature and of plant medicine.
Under the shade of Hawthorn trees Sunday, Sara Butters walked barefoot through Charlotte’s Blueberry Park, Tacoma’s only public food forest. She crouched near the ground, tugging leggy and sticky cleavers from the soil before gathering them in a basket.
Butters owns the Hawthorn & Honey apothecary and herbal medicine shop in Proctor. She spent the morning and afternoon teaching about a dozen students how to pick and process cleavers, a common weed known to improve circulation, reduce swelling and ease congestion in the lymphatic system.
For more than 10 years, Butters has led seasonal foraging classes at local forests, beaches and mountainous areas of Washington. Sunday was Week 6 of her current eight-week spring apprenticeship program. In two weeks her 40 students will have learned how to harvest chickweed, purple dead nettle, miners lettuce, stinging nettle, Oregon grape root, dandelion, bleeding heart, horsetail, plantain, spruce, cleavers and hawthorn flowers. They’ll also know how to craft them into tinctures, infused oils, honeys, vinegars and elixirs.
Her students laughed and caught up Sunday as they filled jars with green plants and made flower crowns to celebrate the coming of Beltane, which marks the beginning of summer, fertility and growth. Many told The News Tribune they found community and an innate connection to the Earth through foraging.
Butters said it’s important to ground ourselves and remember that we come from nature. She grew up on Whidbey Island and was raised in naturalism and herbalism. Butters left her Seattle job and moved to Tacoma when she turned 40 to fill a deep craving to be more connected to the natural world.
Some of her students have lifelong health issues that modern medicine “hasn’t been able to give them answers for, and through their own exploration with the plants, they find healing,” Butters said. Others just want to be more in touch with nature and their community.
“Your nervous system just downshifts when you come into nature. It’s very relaxing and calming. And so in this day and age, when we are running ourselves ragged, our nervous system is fried and overwhelmed, and we’re struggling to be able to calm down and really find peace,” Butters said. “Nature is great for that. Oftentimes, when people come to me who have nervous system issues, they’re looking for some sort of herbal support. But what I do is I take them into nature to make their own medicine, because sometimes making the remedies is the medicine in itself.”
Many students go on to graduate and make their own herbal products that are carried by the Hawthorn & Honey apothecary. Everyone who works in the store is a graduate of the program, Butters said.
They don’t forage anywhere in North Tacoma, because of the arsenic and pollution in the soil, a result of the former Asarco smelter plant in Ruston. Butters tends to forage in East Tacoma and Puyallup. In the summer her classes go into the Cascades and out into Department of Natural Resource Land in eastern Washington, she said. On the last spring class, the group travels to Central Washington to dig up arrowleaf balsamroot (which is part of the sunflower family) and red root.
“Over the course of the year, they learn the foundations [of herbalism], they make the medicine, and then they learn all of the plants in our surroundings. And so when they walk into nature, they recognize all the plants,” Butters said. “They’re like friends. It’s like learning a new language and kind of opening a library that only those who choose to do so get to experience.”
Although there are rules about what you can forage and where, Butters has the philosophy that foraging is a human right that can be done sustainably.
“Blueberry Park is how I would love to see all parks,” she said, sitting in the shade. “People are welcome to come and gather as many blueberries as they like all summer long, and that has grown into something bigger. People come and gather hawthorn, and now with the medicinal herbs that they are planting around the park … [Parks Tacoma is] really making it into a food forest for the community. And this is how our open spaces should be. They should be used, not just looked at.”
‘Really feeds my soul’
Puyallup resident Jamie Star began the apprenticeship program in the winter after finding out about Hawthorn & Honey through The News Tribune’s article about Butters’ shop that was published in 2025. She started the program amid a massive life change and now considers herbalism, “The best thing that I do in my life.”
“I left my husband of 10 plus years, and I’m a single mom now and … [herbalism has] been so soothing,” she said, while threading stems into a flower crown. “This is so nourishing and really feeds my soul. It feels like church. Like, if there was plant church, I would go to that, and it would be this.”
Star said she feels more connected to womanhood and humanity as a whole through herbalism, “because this is the stuff that was growing in our gardens, and it’s what it got people across the Oregon Trail, and it kept us alive when we came along the colonies.”
In a world that is rapidly changing due to climate change, Star has found hope and comfort in the resiliency of plants.
“We’re going to have to be like the plants, and we’re going to have to adapt,” she said. “They came with us across oceans, whether it was 200 years ago or 12 million years ago. So life carries on, and the Earth does support us, and we’re all in this together.”
Yuliya Lanina, also from Puyallup, started the apprenticeship in the spring. After many years spent at home, Lanina said she felt like she needed to align herself in nature. Although she had an interest in plant medicine, she didn’t know where to start, where to forage and what to look for. Now she feels more confident and has others to lean on.
“I actually have never been a part of a community like this, so it’s so exciting,” Lanina said. “Everybody’s really nice and open and vulnerable, and it just feels safe to share your experience and our stories.”
How to get involved
On the first Wednesday evening of the month, Butters leads a free community plant walk in local parks. May 6’s walk will be at Dead Man’s Pond in Puyallup from 6-7:15 p.m. A $5-$20 donation is welcome.
There are still a few spots open for Butters’ summer apprenticeship class, which is Saturdays or Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from May 30 through July 26. The cost is $1,120.
Visit Hawthorn & Honey at 2703 N. Proctor St. in Tacoma to shop tinctures, herbs, thrifted clothing and gifts from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
