Course Dates

2024-25:

Friday 27th - Sunday 29th September 2024

Friday 22th - Sunday 24th November 2024

Friday 21st - Sunday 23th March 2025

Friday 6th - Sunday 8th June 2025

Online Meeting Dates 2024

TBC

(though these will be one evening a month when we aren’t meeting in person)

Herbal Foundations: The Journey

We are delighted to offer our year long journey into the foundations of herbalism.

Our sessions are packed with plant teachings, employing several different approaches to learning

to provide an immersive learning experience that will give you a solid foundation in

understanding and using herbal medicine. Our course is creative and practical, suitable for total beginners, but also those with some experience in herbalism who would like to take deepen their knowledge, and can of course be taken for personal growth.

Our Herbal Foundations course can serve as a pathway to professional training in becoming a medical herbalist. You will gain over 100 hours of contact time by the end of the course and you will learn about 20 different plants in depth and touch on many more.

~ Nature’s classroom ~

Each weekend we will go out on herb walks to meet the plants where they grow, discuss ethical foraging and teach harvesting skills. We look at plant structure and identification, and help you to create your own plant study book (herbarium).

~ Sensory learning ~

We teach in a sensory way, so you will use all your senses to learn about the plants as we go, this aids memory and connection. You will experience a plant’s taste, smell, visual shape and feel and we will encourage you to record these experiences in drawings, pressings and notes – deepening your own studies.

As we teach about the interplay of plants and people, we will look at human physiology and how plants and their constituents interact with us and our cells and systems.

~ Medicine making ~

You will learn practical medicine making skills and over the year build your own herbal medicine chest (apothecary). These will evolve, shaped by the group’s interests, e.g. oils, balms, tinctures, vinegars, teas, elixirs, syrups, smoulder sticks etc.

To continue your learning between retreats we provide home projects and recipes for preparations you can make as plants come into season between our meetings. We would love you to share your creations with us so we can celebrate your work and help with any challenges.

~ Seasonal ~

Each weekend will have a specific enquiry marking the wheel of the year and the changes in landscape and energy. We will feel into our elemental connection with plants and how the seasons affect the land and self and how this informs our herbalism practice. The remedies we make will be rooted in seasonal availability and abundance.

Working in this way brings us into greater understanding of ourselves and the natural world and helps you to get to know the feel of each plant’s character. This kind of knowledge will inform the choices you make as a herbalist (home or professional) when making blends and remedies.

~ 4 Herbal Retreat Weekends ~

Our year long journey will be shaped by our 4 weekend retreats, where we will meet in-person from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. The venue we have chosen for this is in a designated area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) in the Dee valley, North Wales. Our accommodation will be in a large comfortable guest-house in a quiet village with immediate access to the wilds of nature as our classroom as we study herbalism (more accommodation details below).

~ 8 Online Meetings ~

Between retreat weekends we will hold online meetings so that we can check in, see what’s growing and share what we’ve been making and feeling. These meetings are an opportunity to share your successes and challenges and we will provide support and ideas.

~ At the end of the course you will have ~

Your own herbarium

A plant study book of pressed plant samples & notes

A plant sketch book

We encourage you to draw plants to observe them closely

A wild journal

A notebook of observations and your medicine making

A home apothecary

A medicine chest of herbal medicines you have made

A final project

An optional assignment inspired by plant kin

Course Flow

September ~ of Fire & Earth

Our first weekend will bring us into connection with Earth energy and we’ll be looking at hips, haws, roots and seeds - the depths of autumnal wonder and grounding medicine. We will explore wild medicines which support and tonify as well as looking at herbs of Saturn and Mercury.

November ~ of Earth and Water

This weekend we will feel into the emotional body, exploring the element of water and making medicines with an essence of self-care. We will look at how water affects us and the cycles of the moon in relation to our immunity. We will explore herbs of the Moon and Neptune.

March ~ of Water & Air

This weekend will be all about spring and the emergence from winter, wild medicines emerging from the cold hard earth, medicine making with spring herbs, ceremony, plant connection and much more.

We will be making our apothecaries and herbarium. We will also be looking at conditions of the heart and blood through the lens of sanguine aspects. We will explore herbs of Venus and Jupiter.

June ~ of Air & Fire

This weekend will be bright and blazing as the fire energy of June feeds into the high energies of summer with flowers bursting into bloom and medicine making of floral remedies. We will be utilising the fire energy to explore our choleric action and how this impacts the body. We will look at herbs of the Sun and Mars