Herbs + Fungi of the Mediterranean: Enchanted Forests and Meadows of Greece

January 14, 2026 6pm EST/3pm Pacific - LIVE + access to a recording!

Join herbalists Jade Alicandro, Eleni Bourou + mycologist Olga Tzogas for a peek into the biodiversity and natural world of northern Greece. Together we take a visual journey from the city to the forests + high mountain meadows painted with super blooms of dozens of flower species and fairy rings of mushrooms. Learn about a handful of typical medicinal and aromatic plants we run into, their use and history locally in the region and beyond. Lets envision Spring in the thick of Winter and learn what plants and mushrooms grow in northern Greece.

-Connect with herbalists and experts sharing their work and relationships with plants and mushrooms from the Mediterranean bioregion

-Learn about the biogeography of the southern Balkan Peninsula

-Meet common + rarer plants and mushrooms in their showiest stages of growth

-Witness various ways local people use common and endemic herbs, plants and mushrooms

-Yearn for Spring during long, dark Winter days :)

FREE - ONLINE

You'll be emailed the Zoom link after registration

Duration 1-1.5 hours

Hosts:

Jade Alicandro

Jade Alicandro has been formally studying herbs since 2006 and teaching about them since 2012. Her relationship with the green world began in childhood and some spots that especially held her were the tops of huge White Pine trees and the skunk cabbage swamp and cranberry bog behind her childhood home. Although she didn’t learn that herbalism even existed as a profession until her early 20’s, upon realizing that one could go to school to learn about the medicinal benefits of plants, she returned home to the northeast, from travels out west and in Central and South America, to study herbs in earnest. She attended every herb school she could manage to find during those early years of the internet and her herbal educational background is rich in Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda and the Vitalist tradition of herbalism. Education is at the heart of her work as an herbalist and she has taught a 9 month apprenticeship in bioregional herbalism since 2013, a winter online series on kitchen medicine and medicinal culinary herbs since 2015, runs an online membership program on Patreon, has taught around the country and at numerous herbal conferences, and has been a guest teacher in Sicily for Radici Siciliani’s ‘Botanico Sacro’ plant gathering.

She’s a mother, caretaker to her mostly wild gardens (which more or less take care of themselves), tender of a menagerie of animals (goats, kittens and beloved family pup), forager, and kitchen witch. When she’s not roaming the hedges with her harvest basket in hand, she can often be found cooking up some potent food as medicine or trying out a new recipe.  Forever inspired by the wisdom and traditions of her Greek and Southern Italian ancestors, her herbal, food as medicine and foraging practice is an homage to the beloved ancestors and she carries this lineage forward through the container of Milk & Honey Herbs. You can learn more about her work at www.milkandhoneyherbs or @milkandhoneyherbs.

Olga Tzogas runs and operates Smugtown Mushrooms, a farm and mushroom production facility that cultivates mushrooms, offers growing supplies and provides classes to her community for over ten years and has been studying mushrooms and plants for two decades. She is a daughter of Greek immigrant parents and grandparents who started a Greek diner in Rochester, NY in the late 1970s that still operates today. Growing up, she returned back to Greece with her family and spent lots of time in her parents village in the northern borderlands. As she became more enamored with Mycology and botanical studies, her times in Greece became anew, and relearning what gifts the land and experience in the Balkan peninsula shared. Olga remembered that this was part of her, a living tradition, to learn from and to share. Its a deep honor and pleasure to be able to return to Greece to guide, host and share what is loved the most; frolicking in the forest and fields looking at mushrooms, plants and birds.

Her love for fungi and plants definitely has a lot to do with the kitchen, and you’ll notice she’s here to feed people and make them feel comfy and held. She loves the act of growing and gathering food with people and cooking afterwards. Her long family tradition of caring and cooking for people extends here in Greece and with many of her class offerings is a huge part of who she is. Let her show you how she learned to cook some mushrooms!

Olga Tzogas has been hosting classes, events, art shows, music events and lastly and more importantly, mushroom and biocentric events for over a decade. She is a co-creator and organizer for the New Moon Mycology Summit, a justice focused mycology and biocentric gathering. In the past, was an organizer for Mycosymbiotics Mushroom and Arts Festival, now called MycoFest and in 2016 was a core organizer for the Radical Mycology Convergence in New York. She started bringing mushroom minded people to Greece since 2016.

Eleni Bourou

A pharmacist and herbalist that has been working with plants for the past 15 years, more specifically growing, harvesting and processing plants to produce reliable and effective therapeutic and cosmetic preparations, but also simply observing them seasonally and mediating to bring people closer to plants and their own bodies, through phytotherapeutic consultation and the sharing of relevant knowledge (workshops, plant walks).  Eleni has recently shared knowledge and facilitated herbal workshops in collaboration with institutions and ventures such as: Global Environments Network (GEN), Radical Herbalism Gathering-UK, Herbfeast-Ireland, Herbalism Day-New Guinea Estate/Nea Makri, Queer Spring Fest-Athens, Hearing Voices-Athens. Eleni is interested in herbal community projects in which she has often participated as a coordinator or simple member and the use of plants in reproductive and sexual health.

Eleni comes from a family of healers – Western-educated as well as traditional – which has been a stimulus for exploring the contrasts, convergences and tensions between the Western biomedical-pharmaceutical and the holistic-traditional health care model. Starting from studies in Pharmacy (UOA) Eleni continues to educate themselves on plant therapy (The Plant Medicine School, Medicum college, Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine, Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, Northeast school of Botanical medicine) but also subjects such as nutrition, traditional Mayan womb massage and more traditional practices.