Hi, I'm Rosie Cooper.

I'm a herbalist, wilderness rite of passage guide, cleaner and shop assistant. 

 

I've been in love with plants for about since I was 19, and with herbalism since 23 years old. 

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I have my own way with herbs. 

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Grassroots herbalism is genuinely empowering. There is something unspeakable, which is felt in the moment when you experience the power in the simplicity of gathering herbs from a garden, forest or market and making a medicine which offers tangible, sometimes immediate relief from some ailment. The realisation that this actually works and is real. 

That feeling never gets old.

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I really love to educate people about herbal medicine as an essential form of healthcare.

 

Give a girl balm and she'll stop itching for a week. Teach a girl to harvest and make medicines... and she'll become a community herbalist! (Doesn't quite roll off the tongue)

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I studied Western Herbal Medicine / Naturopathy at Endeavour College and Southern School of Natural Therapies respectively, between 2010 -2012. Super grateful for the foundation in health sciences to broaden my herbal and nutritional knowledge, but in hindsight those studies left my head overloaded with unsupported information and my heart feeling empty and starving for connection with plants and life, and yearning for truly practical, embodied, relevant learning.

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It took me years to find balance again. And for that, I give much gratitude to these particular special people who have been my teachers over the last decade:

Claire Dunn

Rebecca Altman

jim mcdonald

Malcolm Ringwalt

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I am so grateful to the people I have learnt from; all who have walked their own path and who live in reciprocity, connection and kindness; holding their roots in deep, turning this culture back to the earth.

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I am forever grateful to the land where I live, Dja Dja Wurrung country, the ancient and present people of this place, who live in reciprocity, kinship and connection with this country.​​​​​​

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And this is my favourite poem:​

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Sleeping in the Forest

 

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better

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-Mary Oliver