ArborVitae offers a comprehensive professional foundational first year that runs from September to May. It offers over 343 classroom hours of instruction in basic herbalism, materia medica, holistic anatomy and physiology, botany and plant identification, and medicine making. Students will also achieve a basic knowledge in traditional nutrition, wild food, first aid, varied herbal applications through the life-cycles, and energetic assessment. Instruction will include a variety of traditional approaches to healing, with a focus on western herbalism based on energetics, Vitalism, and the tissue state model.

Students who complete the first year of study at ArborVitae can expect to gain a basic understanding of herbal medicine, with application for friends and family. The first year program is a comprehensive course that is the foundational year for the three year clinical program.