For my industry event I decided to go to an open house at Morning Sun in New Egypt, NJ (right by Jackson or Six Flags), a registered United Plant Savers sanctuary that has over 150 species and many of which are endangered. On 11/23 they had a seed exchange and I went with a whole lot of seeds and also the intent of approaching strangers (something I’m generally not the best at). With a topic in mind it was easier to start conversations and it also felt purposeful. Generally I did a pretty successful job of talking to people about my herbalism and foraging wiki, albeit a bit sheepishly at first because I was oddly embarrassed to talk to people about it who are actually practicing herbalists and foragers. Almost everyone I spoke with got excited over the idea of being able to have access and contribute to an open, community-based resource for plant information. A few people commented on how much they like the name “Phytosophy,” one saying that they thought it was a compelling. Laura, the creator and herbalist of the sanctuary, expressed a level of concern over the wiki making it seem like it’s giving medical advice (which is illegal in the US) and also over how it might encourage people to employ plants solely based off of Phytosophy info. The latter is a bad thing because herbalism, in practice, requires one to have a connection to the plants, not just simply “use” them for our needs. I entirely understood her concern and while I had definitely considered ways to prevent it from making herbalism seem too casual, I hadn’t considered the legal side of it. It really just simply means that I’ll have to be careful with my wording.

Unfortunately I didn’t really get much else specific feedback beyond “this sounds really cool!” but nonetheless appreciated the encouragement. Ultimately going to this industry event and talking to people about Phytosophy definitely increased my confidence in the project and my will to get it done as well as possible. In the back of my head I’ve been worried about the reactions of people who are in the plant community so I’m glad I went and pushed myself to talk about it. A significant facet of my project’s success will depend on word of mouth and having people talk about it to each other. Hopefully this event will lead to even more people learning about it from those I talked to.