Meet Mel

Mel Kasting, RH (AHG), is a clinical herbalist, botanist, and amateur wild foods chef, living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southern Virginia. She is an instructor and Clinic Director for the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine’s student-led free clinic located in Lowgap, North Carolina and has been in practice for 8 years, offering in-person and distance consultations.

 

Mel is trained in functional herbalism, a modality that blends traditional western herbalism with clinical nutrition and functional medicine. It is a systems-based model that honors traditional plant-based care, while recognizing the importance of lifestyle modifications, herbs, and supplements, alongside functional laboratory testing, to address the whole person rather than an isolated set of symptoms or disease.

Through free clinic work and her business, Forest Edge Herbals, Mel is exploring the intersections of herbalism, botany, society, and somatic experiencing to support plant-centered botanical medicine and the celebration of the teeming diversity life brings.