Presenters at the Plant People Gathering

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

Bay's Offering (with Christina Zeidler)

Craft and Chill

In between the spaces of learning, walking and observing that you will be experiencing with the herbalists, come craft and chill with us. Bay Woodyard and Christina Zeidler will host a quiet space to cool off and reflect on what you have been learning during the weekend by crafting with plants. Natural Plant Inks & Fabric Printing with botanicals will be on offer. No formal lessons, but enough instruction so you can spend some quality chilled out time with the plants in a different way.

Blair Richards-Koeslag is a herbalist, manager of the Golden Bough Tree Farm and Permaculture teacher who spends much of her time with baby trees. She is passionate about life and the processes in nature that support this beautiful planet and all her inhabitants.

goldenboughtreefarm.ca

Blair's Offering

A Forest of Medicine

The ancient, present, future forest, vast, threatened, intimidating, immortal, lost, clear cut, calling us, listen. An ever changing canopy, waving with the breath of the earth, speaks. Multilayered, deep, rising, falling, endlessly giving, eating sunlight, connecting to rain. As herbalists we are ready, baskets in hand to gather branches and barks, buds and blossoms, with tobacco and prayers to offer for our friends and family. In search of the physical, emotional, spiritual assistance that is offered here, with the trees and the many layered tale of botanical time. What is the story of the forest herself? How has our world been shaped by these magical, medicinal beings. As we wander through the canopy of majestic life forms, something so present in the moment, draws us in, so that we forget our selves and feel how deeply connected all life is. Let us lean into the life of the forest with curiosity about it's inhabitants in slow time.

Christina Zeidler is an artist interested in the creative possibilities of deep collaboration. Her mediums include film, music, photography, painting, curation, activism, entrepreneurship and creative placemaking. She moved to Prince Edward County 5 years ago and has been learning about natural inks and dyes as part of her artistic practice and herbal explorations. She is inspired by many artists she has met here and the vibrant arts scene in The County.

Christina's Offering (with Bay Woodyard)

Craft and Chill

In between the spaces of learning, walking and observing that you will be experiencing with the herbalists, come craft and chill with us. Bay Woodyard and Christina Zeidler will host a quiet space to cool off and reflect on what you have been learning during the weekend by crafting with plants. Natural Plant Inks & Fabric Printing with botanicals will be on offer. No formal lessons, but enough instruction so you can spend some quality chilled out time with the plants in a different way.

Julia is an interdisciplinary eco-artist and the founder of Upward Spiral, her practice for embodied healing. She facilitates forest gatherings, retreats and creative art-making experiences. Julia is particularly interested in practices of reciprocal healing with human and tree relations. She is a member of Wild Soma, a collective for embodiment research. She is a member of Double Pendulum Collective. After their interdisciplinary artists’ residency at a neuroscience lab, the collective is currently researching with mushrooms. Julia’s own research focuses on human and tree relations. Julia is a movement teacher, on faculty at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Julia is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) focusing on walk and talk therapy that offers practices of kinship and reciprocity with more than humans. In all her work, Julia is committed to reaching towards mutual thriving for all beings.

www.upwardspiral.me

Julia's Offering

Dancing with Trees

This movement workshop will focus on relational practices with trees. Julia's classes share in a range of experience--spiraling motion, the teachings of the trees, embodied connections and the beauty of our planet as it spins through the vast universe. And maybe with some sparkly fairy magic mixed in. Part choreographed and part improvised, Julia shares movement frameworks to explore our humanity as relations of the living world.

Lynn is an eclectic herbalist with a nutrition focus. She has a full-time clinical practice where she supports clients in achieving metabolic and digestive balance to resolve pain and inflammation. She is also the program director for a family collaborative called Thrive Hive, a private membership community which provides weekly group coaching and extensive resources on a variety of health topics.

https://www.juliedaniluk.com/ @lynndanilukeclecticherbalist (Instagram)

Lynn's Offering

Herb & Drug Interactions: A Holistic Approach

According to Statistics Canada, over 65% of Canadians are on some type of prescription medication. Even if you have not started a clinical practice, understanding the relationship between herbs and allopathic medications and treatments is an important topic for everyone. Lynn will share her decades of experience blending mainstream medicine with holistic therapies and provide practical steps to support those facing the challenges of conventional medicine.

Michael Vertolli BSc, RH
Michael is a Western traditional herbalist who has been practicing since 1986. He is the
founder and director of Living Earth School of Herbalism, which offers in-class and online
classes and workshops and a clinical diploma program in Western herbal medicine. Michael
developed Four Elements Herbal Therapy, a system of Western herbalism that integrates the
physiological approach of modern European and North American traditions of herbalism within
the broader holistic and spiritual 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.
livingearthschool.ca michaelvertolli.blogspot.ca

Michael's Offering

Living Plant Exploration

Step out onto the land and examine the medicines up close in this workshop that will focus on a few key wild plants found growing at New Moon Farm. This workshop will provide an in-depth discussion of the botany, harvesting techniques and various therapeutic benefits of some of our local wild herbs.

Monika Ghent is a Weather Worker and Traditional Healer in the Nahua tradition of Central Mexico. She is also a Western Traditional Herbalist, Plant Spirit Medicine Healer and Distance Healer. 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 and her husband have a school of herbalism (Living Earth School of Herbalism) which offers general interest workshops and diploma programs in Western herbalism and related fields of study. The nature of Monika’s work is shaped by her deep love and respect for 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.

www.monikaghent.ca; info@monikaghent.ca; www.livingearthschool.ca

Monika's Offering

The Holism of Herbs

Holism is the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and a part cannot be understood independently of the whole. In the practice of holistic healing, illnesses are seen as the manifestation of imbalance or disease within the whole being and healing must be multi-layered to be truly effective. Herbs are holistic. They support and catalyse physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual healing (and much more!). In this workshop, participants will experience the holism of herbs directly through the process of “herb testing.” They will be given a mystery herb to take as a tea or tincture and notice the herb's effects within them and how to interpret what they are experiencing. Afterward, participants will receive the same herb’s plant spirit medicine and any wisdom, blessings, messages, and medicines they wish to share with them.

Pascaline Phillips was in practice as a naturopathic doctor for 24 years and dropped her license in 2024 to practice with more freedom as a Holistic Health Practitioner. She has a general family practice which is diverse in scope. The goal is always to prevent disease, but Pascaline also treats people with a wide range of illnesses, from acute illness and digestive problems to hormonal disorders, chronic pain, autoimmune disease and cancer. Treatments focus on diet and nutrition, often incorporating botanical medicine, vitamins, classical homeopathy, as well as crystal acupuncture (for entity release), Reiki and tuning fork treatments. Pascaline also treats animals – dogs, cats and horses (so far) – because they need and respond so well to holistic treatments.

https://naturalpanacea.ca/

Pascaline's Offering

TERRAIN THEORY – the underpinning of a truly holistic approach to health

What is Terrain Theory? Are so-called ‘bad’ bacteria the enemy – or are they allies? Why does the germ theory hold dominance in our paradigm, when it is just a theory? What are viruses? How do anti-viral drugs work? What is an immune system? All of these questions and more will be addressed in this presentation that intends to elucidate a key element in the holistic perspective on health. This anti-mechanistic framework for viewing our bodies in relation to the world around us focuses on teamwork--particularly with our microbial community, which helps empower us to align with nature in holistic support of our wellness.

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

Steven's Offering

Co-Creating Abundant, Ecologically Integrated Herbal Polyculture; For Food, Medicine & Profit

Learn about an alternative and ecologically integrated approach to standardized herb growing - biomimicry. Understanding that because the industrial focus in growing herbs is for quantity, a herb’s potency, sustainability and ecological integrity are often sacrificed. Learn how we can sustainably and ethically make a living growing and working with herbs. Steven has made a living from knowing, growing and harvesting wild herbs for almost forty years, and has done this: as a wildcrafter for medicine makers; as an owner and commercial grower for a certified organic tea company; as a college educator working within the system; and as a teacher and community herbalist outside of regulatory enforcement. It's a journey to learn to grow herbs in an ecologically integrated way that's also economically sustainable for you, the grower. Profit is like a dirty word for many of us but the fact of the matter is that we can't keep doing these beautiful ecologically sustainable things unless there is recognized value in it, or profit. So, Steven will also focus on ways of growing that are economically viable.