Bay Woodyard
Bay has been studying natural dyes for decades. She received a diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art in 1994. She has lived and worked on her honey and herb farm, Honey Pie Hives & Herbals, in Prince Edward County, Ontario for 25 years. Bay grows and forages many natural dye plants and dyes yarn to sell in her farm store along with her many honey and herbal products. She teaches workshops on the farm including natural dying. She creates abstract artworks out of hand spun, naturally dyed local wool that she knits and crochets. She exhibits regularly and has recently been selected for an artist residency by the local arts council. Bay is a co-creator of Gather in the County, a modern textile market in Picton, Ontario with over 80 textile vendors, art installations and guilds participating. honeypie.ca
Julie Gaia
Julie Gaia is a mother, mentor, seed saver, weaver, star seed, animist, land tender, and plant spirit medicine carrier. She grew up on a dairy farm in southern Ontario. She studied Herbalism formally with Sage Maurer at the Gaia School in Vermont, and Pam Montgomery in California. For 10 years she created and tended a 1-acre permaculture ( fruit, herbs, bees, mushrooms, and plants) haven in the Carolinian forest. She started her herbalism journey when she was 19 years old in Saskatchewan. She worked with plants to heal her pneumonia, and her lungs healed without antibiotics. Since then, she has been dedicated to the plant path. She created the Gaia Hive to share her love of plants and create a space for living mentorships on the land. She has an Herbalism and Plant Spirit Medicine Practice alongside group mentorships. www.GaiaHive.ca
Blair Richards Koeslag
Growing in love with nature is a life long process. After spending years and years of her life attempting to deny it Blair has finally surrendered to the fact she a forest sprite.
Blair Richards-Koeslag is a Charted Herbalist, PINA certified permaculture teacher, who has spent 24 years working with trees at the Golden Bough Tree Farm and loves the land deeply.
Michael Vertolli
Michael is a Western traditional herbalist who has been practicing since 1986. He is a respected lecturer who has been teaching since the late 80’s. He is the founder and director of Living Earth School of Herbalism. Michael developed Four Elements Herbal Therapy, a system of Western herbalism that integrates the physiological knowledge of modern North American and European traditions of herbalism within the broader holistic paradigm of traditional earth-centred healing traditions. He has also done extensive research on medicinal herbs that are native to and naturalized in northeastern North America, many of which are no longer in common use.
Monika Ghent
Monika Ghent is a Western Traditional Herbalist, Plant Spirit Medicine Healer, Distance Healer, Weather Worker and Traditional Healer in the Nahua tradition of Central Mexico. She has a private practice in Maple, Ontario where she sees clients in person and also works with people
throughout the world as a Distance Healer. She runs the Living Earth School of Herbalism with her husband, Michael Vertolli. The nature of Monika’s work is shaped by her respectful relationship with the divine natural world and all living beings. As a healer and teacher, Monika supports others in awakening to the beauty of their uniqueness and living their truth to its fullest expression in health and wholeness.
monikaghent.ca livingearthschool.ca
Steven Martyn
M.A. (traditional plant use), B.F.A. honours, artist, farmer, wildcrafter, builder, teacher, writer, visionary. Steven has more than thirty years experience living co-creatively with the Earth, practicing traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing. Steven created Livingstone & Greenbloom in 1986, Toronto’s first green landscaping company. In 1996, he created the Algonquin Tea Company, North America’s premiere bioregional tea company. He has given talks and run workshops internationally for more than twenty years and taught plant identification and wilderness skills at Algonquin college for 11 years, and at the Orphan Wisdom School for eight years. In 2014, Megan and Steven started the Sacred Gardener Earth Wisdom School. Steven released his first book The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden in 2016, his second, Sacred Gardening in June 2017 and The Roundhouse in 2022. thesacredgardener.ca