2025 Food as Medicine Symposium speaker Ellen Donald on sustainable farming to address challenges across food, health, and climate.
Ellen Donald joined the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) in 2017 with a clear goal: to work more closely with plants and young adults.
After more than a decade working as a garden teacher and sustainability educator, instructing youth to grow their own food and incorporate sustainable practices into their daily lives, Donald wanted to explore a different approach to gardening.
NUNM provided an ideal balance—hands-on work with plants as the campus gardener, coupled with the opportunity to mentor future horticulturists and conservationists as an adjunct faculty member teaching an introductory permaculture course.
As part of the 11th annual Food as Medicine Symposium on May 3-4, Donald will present a discussion entitled “Permaculture Approaches to Transforming the Food System.”
The theme of this year’s symposium, “Feeding Change: Community-Centered Approaches to Food as Medicine,” made permaculture a natural choice, they said, given its emphasis on sustainability, self-sufficiency, and working in sync with nature.
Ellen Donald discussed permaculture and the Food as Medicine Symposium, as well as their experiences both in and outside the classroom with NUNM.
NUNM: What led you to work and teach at NUNM?
Donald: At the time, I had a burgeoning interest in medicinal plants and how to tend to them and a friend mentioned that NUNM was looking for a gardener. I was immediately struck at what a perfect fit this could be for me. Within a year of arriving, some of the students asked whether I would teach a permaculture course—another professional goal of mine. Since then, dozens of our work-study students have helped in tending to the Min Zidell Healing Garden and Minh Chau edible garden, as well as the plants in and around the NUNM Academic Building. My ‘Introduction to Permaculture’ class has also been offered at various times over the years.
Why did you choose permaculture for the symposium discussion?
Honestly, it just flowed from my head upon reading the theme for this year’s event, “Feeding Change: Community-Centered Approaches to Food as Medicine”. I knew this would be a perfect opportunity for me to share my vision of how permaculture can help address food insecurity and the nutritional imbalances that come with our current food system. It’s always been a goal of mine to see more people gardening and for cities to better utilize their green spaces to provide food, medicine, meaningful work, and social opportunities, while also addressing things like climate change, biodiversity loss, and chronic health issues.
What can participants gain from attending the 2025 FAMI Symposium event?
In my opinion, we all need to be more active in a local food system! I wholeheartedly believe that people need to reclaim control over where they source their food from, and that doing so will move the needle toward solving other seemingly unrelated issues. My life’s work is really about empowering people with the tools they need to do that successfully, and this is an opportunity to build off that. I hope participants gain insight into how we might fix some of the larger challenges our society faces and that the ability to do so is within our reach.
Editor’s note: The 2025 Food as Medicine Symposium, organized by NUNM’s Food as Medicine Institute, is set to take place May 3-4, with optional event tracks for both the public and healthcare professionals. Learn more or register today.
Founded in 2010, the Food as Medicine Institute provides evidence-based nutrition education to individuals, families, and communities while nourishing healthy relationships with whole foods and educates health care professionals on the use of food as medicine in the prevention and reduction of chronic disease.