A LAND-BASED HERBALISM
Herbalism begins with the land. Before there can be medicine, there must be living soil, clean water, healthy plants, thriving pollinators and the conditions that allow these relationships to flourish. Tending to the land in this way is medicine in itself – for the places immediately around us and, in turn, for the wider living world.
The Herbal Apprenticeship is a year-long, land-based journey through four seasonal gatherings, following the plants and landscape in real time. Rooted in Irish folk medicine, the Celtic Wheel of the Year and the cyclical nature of traditional plant knowledge, we work exclusively with the wild native medicinal herbs of our European landscapes – many of the same plants our ancestors knew as food, medicine and companions in everyday life.
Rather than approaching these plants simply as remedies or ingredients, we learn to live alongside them as green family. We meet them within their habitats and through the changing seasons, learning how they grow, where they thrive and what supports them. Sometimes good herbal practice means gathering; at other times it means tending, propagating, protecting or simply leaving a plant where it is. Learning to recognise the difference is part of becoming literate with land.
Food as medicine sits at the frontline of this work. Herbalism is not reserved for moments of illness, but belongs within everyday nourishment, preventative care and healthy living. What grows in the garden and landscape, and what we preserve in the seasonal pantry, therefore becomes part of the way we learn about plants and their place within daily life.
Across the year, only four apprentices gather to learn in this way – closely, practically and in relationship with plant, place and season. It is an apprenticeship in folk medicine, but also in attention, curiosity and care: learning not simply what we can make with plants, but how we might live well alongside them and help ensure their continuation.
LEARNING WITH THE GREEN FAMILY
Plants are not met here simply as remedies, nor learnt as a list of actions, constituents and indications. Each has many facets, and throughout the apprenticeship we explore a selection of ways of coming to know them – through food and folk medicine, ecology and cultivation, craft and making, folklore and seasonal tradition, as well as through their medicinal properties and relationship with the human body.
A willow, for instance, may be encountered as medicinal bark, but it may also teach us through pruning and propagation, living hedging, basketry and weaving, botanical dye, charcoal, ink or paint, habitat and early food for pollinators. These are not a checklist of things to be completed with every plant. Different plants offer different possibilities, and we follow what is appropriate to the plant, the season, the place and the particular year in which we meet.
Alongside this broader plant literacy, we explore the foundations of folk medicine – body systems, plant constituents and energetics, sensory herbalism, preventative care and the thoughtful preparation of herbs for everyday and more specific needs. Plants may find their way into teas and foods, vinegars and honeys, oils and balms, or other preparations appropriate to what we are learning and what the season provides.
The intention is not to accumulate as many plants, remedies or preparations as possible. It is to develop botanical literacy, practical confidence and curiosity – to know fewer plants more deeply, to recognise their many faces, and to begin building the kind of relationship with the green family that can continue long after the apprenticeship year has ended.
EXPERIENCE BEFORE ABSTRACTION
This apprenticeship is rooted in experiential learning. Wherever possible, we encounter something through our hands, senses and lived experience before turning to the language that describes it. Theory remains important, but it follows recognition – giving name and structure to something we have already begun to know.
Plant anatomy, for example, can begin through the fingertips before we ever look at a diagram. Through working practically with stems, roots, bark, leaves, flowers and seeds, the vascular system becomes something encountered in the living plant rather than first understood as an illustration on a page. Structure, fibre, moisture, growth and flexibility become tangible, and the botanical language that follows has something real to attach itself to.
The same is true of plant energetics. Qualities that can seem abstract when learnt from a book become more intelligible when a plant has been tasted, smelled, touched, grown, gathered, prepared or worked with through traditional craft. Sensory herbalism, medicine making, food, fibre, dye and other practical skills offer different ways of noticing what a plant is doing and how it expresses itself.
This approach encourages curiosity, observation and independent thinking. Rather than relying upon a prescribed method for every situation, apprentices are encouraged to question, experiment thoughtfully and become resourceful with what is already around them. There is value in understanding materials, working with simple tools and developing the confidence to find practical solutions without assuming that specialist equipment is always necessary.
Learning in this way allows knowledge to become lived rather than merely remembered. Head, heart and hands remain in conversation, and what is first encountered on the land, around the hearth or through making can later be recognised within anatomy, botany, materia medica and the written traditions of herbal medicine.
THROUGH A GROWING YEAR
The Herbal Apprenticeship unfolds across four seasonal gatherings because plants cannot be fully understood outside the rhythms of their own lives. Returning to the land from spring through to late autumn allows us to witness change as it happens – emergence and new growth, flowering and fruiting, seed set and the gradual return towards dormancy.
Across the year, we learn to recognise plants at different stages of growth and to understand what each season makes possible. We may sow and propagate, tend young plants, work with roots, leaves, flowers, fruits or seeds when the time is appropriate, gather and save seed, divide established plants and learn how particular species can be supported and encouraged to continue. Following plants through these different stages allows cultivation, propagation and medicine making to become part of the same living cycle.
Not everything is available at once, nor should it be. A plant encountered in spring may look very different when we meet it again later in the year, while something scarcely visible during one gathering may have become abundant by the next. Weather and the particular conditions of each year further shape what we encounter and what is appropriate to do.
Working within the Celtic Wheel of the Year gives this seasonal learning a deeper cultural context. The turning points of the year provide a framework through which we explore traditional plant knowledge, food, folk medicine, folklore, craft and seasonal practice while remaining attentive to what is actually happening on the land around us.
There is no attempt to force the living year to conform to a fixed curriculum. We follow what is present, notice what has changed and learn to respond accordingly. Over time, the seasons themselves become part of the teaching, and botanical knowledge begins to settle into a lived understanding of when plants emerge, flourish, reproduce and rest.
THE LAND AS TEACHER
Much of what plants teach us becomes clearer when we meet them where they have chosen to grow. Throughout the apprenticeship, learning moves beyond the teaching room and into the garden, hedgerows, meadows, woodland and mountain landscapes around us, allowing plants to be encountered as part of living communities rather than as specimens removed from place.
At different points in the year, we also journey into the high Alps, where changes in altitude, exposure, geology and habitat create very different growing conditions. Moving between these landscapes offers an opportunity to observe which plants appear, where they thrive, what grows alongside them and how their form and behaviour respond to the particular conditions of place and season.
This kind of field learning develops ecological as well as botanical literacy. We begin to recognise plant communities, notice the significance of elevation and aspect, and understand that the presence or absence of a species can tell us something about the landscape in which we find it.
The land therefore becomes more than the setting for the apprenticeship. It is an active part of the teaching. By returning to these places through the changing year, apprentices begin to read land and plant together – learning not only what a plant is, but something of why it is growing there, what belongs around it and what its presence can tell us about place.
REGENERATIVE HERBALISM
Working with medicinal plants also means learning how to support the living systems that sustain them. Here in the Alps, six consecutive years of drought and heat have changed the way we tend the land, grow plants, manage water and consider what is appropriate to gather. These conditions are no longer something we can treat as exceptional, and regenerative practice has become an increasingly important part of the apprenticeship.
We learn to recognise signs of stress in plants and landscape and to consider what may be happening beneath our feet. Soil health and microbial life, moisture retention, shade and shelter, ground cover, biodiversity, habitat and pollinator support all influence whether plants can flourish, particularly as growing conditions change. Through practical work on the land, apprentices explore ways of supporting greater resilience while learning to respond to the needs of a particular place rather than imposing a fixed method upon it.
Reciprocity is part of this work. Gathering seed, saving and sowing it, propagating plants, dividing where appropriate, creating habitat and tending the soil are ways of participating in continuation rather than thinking only about what can be gathered for our own use. Sometimes the most appropriate response to a plant or landscape under pressure is simply to leave it undisturbed.
Regenerative herbalism asks us to think beyond the medicine we might make today and towards the health of the land that will make medicine possible tomorrow. Tending soil, water, habitat and plant communities is itself part of the medicine – a practice of guardianing the places in which we live while helping to support their vitality into the future.
AROUND THE HEARTH
The shared hearth is part of the learning here. During each gathering, we pause for a light seasonal lunch and drinks prepared from the kitchen, garden and pantry, allowing another part of the landscape to be encountered through taste. What is growing, flowering, fruiting, gathered or preserved at that particular point in the year may find its way to the table, bringing food as medicine into ordinary, lived practice.
These meals are intentionally simple, wholesome and seasonal. They offer an opportunity to experience how wild and cultivated plants can become part of everyday nourishment and preventative care, while also creating space to sit together, talk, reflect and digest what has been encountered during the day.
The hearth is also a place where the different strands of the apprenticeship naturally meet. Plants encountered outdoors may return with us to the kitchen or worktable; something preserved during one season may be tasted in another; questions raised while making or eating together may lead us back to botany, medicine, ecology or tradition. In this way, nourishment is not separate from the learning but woven through it.
Each gathering is intended to feel less like attending a conventional course and more like entering a living practice for a weekend – learning on the land, working with the hands, sharing food and allowing knowledge and experience to become part of everyday life.
THE 2027 APPRENTICESHIP
The 2027 Herbal Apprenticeship takes place across four seasonal weekends. The same small group of four apprentices returns throughout the year, allowing our learning to deepen as the seasons change and our familiarity with the plants, landscape and one another grows.
Module 1 • SPRING • April 17 + 18, 2027
Module 2 • SUMMER • June 19 + 20, 2027
Module 3 • AUTUMN • August 21 + 22, 2027
Module 4 • WINTER • November 13 + 14, 2027
Each gathering takes place from 10am – 5pm on Saturday and Sunday.
The apprenticeship includes all teaching across the four seasonal weekends, practical herbal and botanical work, seasonal field learning and excursions, course materials and handouts, use of equipment and glassware, access to the herbal library during our gatherings, and a light seasonal lunch and drinks on each teaching day.
Ingredients and plant materials used in our practical work are provided. Where the plants and season allow, apprentices may also return home with seeds, propagated plants or other materials through which their learning can continue.
Places are limited to four apprentices for the complete year.
WHO THIS APPRENTICESHIP IS FOR
This apprenticeship is for those who want to develop a deeper relationship with the medicinal plants of the landscapes around them, whether you are coming to herbalism for the first time or wishing to bring an existing practice closer to land, season and place.
You may be drawn to learning the wild native medicinal plants of Europe and the traditions that surround them; to understanding how food, folk medicine and everyday preventative care belong together; or to developing the practical confidence to grow, propagate, gather, prepare and work with plants in ways that are thoughtful, regenerative and appropriate to their circumstances.
You may simply want to become more botanically literate – to recognise what is growing around you, understand something of the communities in which plants live, notice the changes that come with season and weather, and feel increasingly at home among the green family.
No previous herbal training is required. What matters more is curiosity, a willingness to work practically and spend time outdoors, and a genuine interest in plants and place. The apprenticeship asks you to return across the year, to pay attention to what changes and to allow understanding to develop gradually through experience rather than trying to acquire everything at once.
I teach in this way because I believe the world does not simply need more herbalists. We need more people who are truly passionate about plants and place – people willing to know the living world around them more intimately, to deeply care for it, and to carry that relationship into the ways they nourish themselves, make medicine and tend the places they call home.
JOIN THE 2027 APPRENTICESHIP
The Herbal Apprenticeship is offered to just four people each year. This small group is intentional, allowing us to work closely together across the seasons and giving each apprentice the time, space and individual attention that this way of learning requires.
Enrolment is for the complete year and includes all four seasonal gathering weekends, together with the teaching, practical work, materials, seasonal lunches and drinks, field learning and resources described above.
2027 COURSE FEE
€1,950 for the complete apprenticeship year
(Four seasonal gathering weekends – €487.50 per weekend)
The course fee may be paid in full at the time of enrolment, or your place may be secured with a 50% non refundable deposit of €975. The remaining balance of €975 is due in full by 1 March 2027.
If this way of learning speaks to you and you would like to spend the 2027 growing year deepening your relationship with plants, place and folk medicine, you are warmly invited to join us.
PRACTIAL INFORMATION
The Herbal Apprenticeship takes place in Tirol, Austria, in the countryside close to Kufstein. Our full address and directions are provided to registered apprentices ahead of the first gathering. For those travelling internationally, the most convenient airports are Munich in Germany, and Salzburg and Innsbruck in Austria, with public transport and rail connections to Kufstein, our local train station. An airport shuttle service is also available for those who prefer to arrange a transfer, while local taxi services are available from Kufstein. Taxi Bundschuh can be contacted on +43 (0)5372 67474. For current timetables, routes and journey planning, please refer to the Kufsteinerland Tourist Office, ÖBB or Deutsche Bahn.
The apprenticeship is non-residential. Kufstein is approximately 3 km from our teaching location and offers a wide range of hotels, guesthouses, apartments and other accommodation. For current availability and accommodation options, please refer to the Kufsteinerland Tourist Office, Airbnb or Booking.com. We recommend staying in or close to Kufstein so that travelling to and from the apprenticeship each day remains straightforward.
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the intimacy and passion with which niamh teaches is such a rare thing these days. if you get the chance to study with her in person, you should. it's life changing.
Kristina
- Germany -
