What You'll Learn:

🌿 Foraging Fundamentals: Learn to confidently identify, harvest, and enjoy wild edible plants using proven techniques from the field.

🔍 Plant Identification Strategies: Master simple, repeatable methods to recognize safe edible species and avoid toxic lookalikes.

⚠️ Foraging Safety: Navigate common hazards like pesticides, poisonous plants, and urban contaminants with confidence.

📚 Research & Field Skills: Build a strong foundation using trusted literature, field exercises, and guided observation methods.

♻️ Sustainable Harvesting: Develop ethical foraging habits that protect ecosystems and ensure long-term abundance.

Benefits

🌱 Connect with Nature Through Food: Build an intimate relationship with your local landscape by discovering what’s edible in your own backyard.

🧠 Learn for a Lifetime: Gain a method—not just a list—that empowers you to continue learning new plants confidently on your own.

👨‍👩‍👧 Family-Friendly Curriculum: Use the course with kids or partners—it’s accessible, engaging, and turns learning into a shared adventure.

🧘‍♀️ Mindful Outdoor Experience: Slow down, observe deeply, and discover the calming, grounding rhythm of interacting with wild plants.

Why Choose Us?

🧭 Expert-Led Instruction: Taught by a seasoned forager with years of hands-on experience and a passion for sharing practical, field-tested knowledge.

🌟 Designed for Real Life: Whether you're a backyard beginner or a backwoods explorer, the course meets you where you are with tools you can use immediately.

📚 Complete Learning System: Includes videos, lesson outlines, exercises, plant references, and book recommendations for self-paced success.

We're so sure that you'll love The Naturalist Training Program that we're offering an outrageous guarantee: You have 30 days after your membership starts to change your mind and ask for a refund. No hassle, no questions asked, no hard feelings!

Matthew Hunter

Matthew Hunter is the creator of courses in wilderness survival and foraging. He has filmed over 150 videos about edible wild plants and survival skills, and regularly leads plant walks in his local area. He is an expert in the edible and medicinal flora of multiple regions and maintains a foraging blog, and is the author of several foraging books.

Matthew is also a specialist in teaching useful survival skills, having spent months at a time alone honing his craft in some of the most remote country in North America. He has practiced foraging for over a decade and has developed mastery in recognizing useful plants, harvesting them, and preparing them as a food source or as herbal remedies.

In his own words:

"When I was seventeen years old I started camping, hiking, foraging and learning survival skills, and spent years sorting through countless books and videos, learning without a clear direction and having to deal with the pain of my own mistakes as my biggest teacher. I wasted TIME learning impractical skills, wasted MONEY on equipment I didn't need, and spent many MISERABLE nights doing things the WRONG way.

I wanted to know how the Native Americans lived and survived in the past. Why don't we still eat the plants they used to eat? Surely we are surrounded by edible plants, but we just don't know about them, right? I took in-person classes which were a big help, but they were expensive, and most only scratched the surface on what I wanted to know about the outdoors.

I wanted to create a better alternative.

My hunch was that that edible plants surround us proved to be absolutely right. Wild plants are everywhere and I learned about their amazing nutritional benefits and importance as emergency or survival food. I quickly started learning plants and amassing a small library of wild food books, and I was amazed at the new world I was discovering right in my own neighborhood!

I did the same in learning survival skills, and then started putting together exactly what I wished I had when I was learning: a clear, concise guide that takes you step-by-step through the most important, practical skills for foraging and surviving in the outdoors. The materials are designed to supercharge the learner with knowledge on almost every major topic, covering a breadth of information that would be impossible to cover in a typical weekend course.

In the ten years since I began teaching these courses, I've found that online instruction is very effective if students are willing to put in the 'dirt' time. Plus, getting outside means you will learn about other aspects of nature too, all the while having FUN in the process!"