Every circle begins with a single plant passed hand to hand. San Pedro is one of the most accessible plants on earth — it belongs in our communities, not behind barriers.
The Model
Plants are responsibly grown through our cultivation partners, ensuring a consistent, ethical, and ecologically sound supply that can meet real demand.
via Regeneration MattersPlants are donated into communities — homes, gardens, schools, and shared spaces — through a stewardship-based request process.
Each plant becomes many. Cuttings are replanted and passed forward, expanding the living network organically — with no central point of control.
The Goal
"Built through thousands of small, local actions — connected into something much larger."
Not through a single institution. Through a network of people who decide to participate.
Why This Moment Matters
Overharvesting and habitat loss are depleting San Pedro cactus in its native range. Demand is growing faster than wild populations can recover.
Interest in San Pedro — for its ecology, its history, and its potential — is at an all-time high. That growth can lead to either depletion or regeneration, depending on what people do with it.
Distributed propagation is uniquely suited to this plant. One cactus, in the right hands, becomes dozens over a few years. The math works — if enough people start now.
This moment won't repeat. The window to shape how this plant re-enters culture is open, and not permanently.
Start a CircleAbout
Circles of San Pedro grew out of a larger vision — that San Pedro cactus, one of the oldest healing plants in human history, deserves to be more than a curiosity in a specialty nursery. It belongs in the ground. In community gardens. On regenerative farms. In the hands of people who will tend it, propagate it, and pass it forward.
The founding insight was ecological before it was anything else: San Pedro is extraordinarily hardy, fast-growing, and generative. A single cutting becomes a thriving specimen in just a few years. That specimen can become dozens. Those dozens can become hundreds. The plant wants to spread. Our job is to give it the right places to go.
We think like a supply chain. Every distribution is tracked. Every recipient makes a commitment. Every garden that receives a plant is part of a living network — one that grows more resilient with every new node. The circle isn't a metaphor. It's the operating model.
The ceremonial history of San Pedro is real, and we don't hide from it. But Circles was founded on the conviction that the best way to honor that history is to treat the plant with agricultural seriousness — to build the kind of deep-rooted, distributed cultivation base that ensures it will be available for generations to come. That work starts in the soil.
The Plant
Known as Huachuma in the Andean traditions where it has been used for at least 3,000 years — likely far longer. Archaeological evidence from northern Peru documents its ceremonial use across multiple pre-Columbian cultures. It is still used today by traditional healers throughout Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
We approach this history with reverence. The plant carries something. We think the most respectful thing we can do is ensure it's grown with the same intentionality with which it has always been held.
In the garden, San Pedro is a workhorse. It grows rapidly — sometimes a foot or more per year — with minimal water and almost no care once established. Its columnar form provides vertical structure, habitat for pollinators, and erosion control. In permaculture systems, it functions as a living fence, a windbreak, and a long-term biomass producer.
What Makes This Different
The network doesn't belong to any one organization. It belongs to the people in it — and it grows whether or not we're watching.
This doesn't live or die by a grant cycle or a single donor. It's distributed, resilient, and built to outlast any one organization.
Anyone with space to grow a plant can participate. The threshold is willingness, not wealth or credentials.
Start a Circle
A Circle can be as small as a few plants in a backyard or as large as a community garden. There is no ideal format. Only participation.
That's it. You've started a Circle.
Application
Tell us a bit about yourself and your space. We'll be in touch with next steps and plant availability in your area.
Get Plants
Plants are distributed as donations to individuals and groups committed to planting, caring for, and sharing them forward. Receiving plants means becoming a steward.
This is not a transaction. It's an ongoing relationship with a living plant and a living network.
Contribute
While a majority of plants are donated, community support expands what's possible.
Logistics, outreach, education, design — there are roles for people with many different backgrounds.
Have a garden, yard, or shared space? That land can become part of the network.
Help with the logistics of getting plants from growers to communities — local or regional.
Already growing San Pedro? Share cuttings into the network and they'll find new homes.
Sustain cultivation, access programs, and the infrastructure that keeps distribution moving.
Every contribution — large or small — helps move more plants into more hands.
Partners
Circles of San Pedro works alongside cultivation partners and community allies committed to responsible growth and distribution.
Primary cultivation partner — scaling ethical, community-oriented supply.
Community
Circles are forming everywhere.
Each garden, each cutting, each act of sharing adds to the whole. What looks like a small action locally is part of a network that keeps expanding.
Photos, map, and community stories expand here over time.
Community map coming soon
Circles forming across North America
"I started with three cuttings in a raised bed. Two years later I've given away over thirty plants to neighbors and a local school. The network thing is real — it does just grow."
"We added San Pedro to our school garden as an educational project. The students learn propagation, ecology, and responsibility. It's become one of the most engaged parts of the curriculum."
"I had no idea how easy these are to propagate. Got a few plants last spring, took my first cuttings this fall, and already have a list of people who want them. It just keeps going."
Support the Work
Your support makes distribution possible. Every dollar goes directly toward sourcing, propagating, and getting plants into the ground at community gardens and regenerative farms. We're building something that has never existed before — a scaled, rooted, reciprocal supply network for one of the most historically significant healing plants in the Americas.
501(c)(3) nonprofit · All donations tax-deductible
