Category Archives: Courses

Magic is Full of Natural Secrets – Becoming a Green City Witch

Green City Witch Course

“Magic is full of Natural Secrets.” — Paracelsus

Magic doesn’t have to take you away from everyday life. It can begin with the tree outside your window, the birds on your street, the plants growing on your windowsill, the changing moon, the weather, the seasons and the particular corner of a park that you enjoy visiting.

This is the starting point for my The Green City Witch Course — a one-year, 13-Moon journey into nature, plants, animals, ritual, herbalism and the living world around us.

What does it mean to be a Green City Witch?

It means paying attention.

It means becoming curious about the plants and animals you encounter every day, learning their names and stories, noticing seasonal patterns and developing your own relationship with the natural world.

It also means discovering that you don’t need to live in a forest or have a cupboard full of mysterious ingredients to practise nature-based magic.

The city is full of allies.

The Green City Witch Course brings together practical knowledge, traditional wisdom, herbalism, ritual and magical practice in a way that is grounded in the real world — and particularly in the urban landscapes in which so many of us live.

A year of exploration

The course unfolds over 13 Moons, with new material opening every four weeks. Each Moon contains four sections:

Lifestyle & Rituals
Explore how magical practice can become part of ordinary life, from creating rituals and working with seasonal rhythms to developing greater awareness of yourself and your surroundings.

Allies
Meet the plants, animals and other beings that share your world. Learn how to notice relationships, develop connections and discover your own local allies.

Spellcraft
Explore the principles and practice of creating meaningful magic, working with intention, symbolism, plants, place and the natural world.

Techniques
Develop practical skills and explore different ways of working with nature, perception, ritual and magic.

The course is primarily online, allowing you to explore the material in your own time and return to it throughout the year.

There are also optional monthly lunch dates and ceremony gatherings in Amsterdam for those who want to meet other Green City Witches, share experiences and bring some of the work into physical space.

You don’t have to call yourself a witch

You don’t need to arrive with a magical practice, a particular tradition or a perfect knowledge of plants. This course is open to everyone.

You simply need curiosity.

Perhaps you’ve always felt drawn to herbs and wild plants. Perhaps you garden, forage, make herbal remedies or spend as much time as possible outdoors. Perhaps you’re interested in folklore, ritual or traditional magic but want to explore it in a grounded, contemporary way.

Or perhaps you simply have a feeling that there is more to the natural world than we usually notice.

The course gives you space to explore that feeling — while developing practical knowledge and skills along the way.

Look closer

One of the most rewarding things about working with nature is what happens when you start to look closely.

A plant stops being just a weed. Familiar birds become incredible beings, perfectly adapted to the city, seasonal patterns and your place in the local ecosystem all start to unfold.

Local trees become landmarks, teachers, sources of medicine, food, folklore or ritual.

The ordinary becomes interesting and the city begins to reveal itself quite differently.

Magic is full of Natural Secrets.

Perhaps some of them are waiting right outside your door.

The next Green City Witch Course begins 10 October 2026

Early Bird enrolment is now open. 12 Monthly payments of €19 currently available.

Discover The Green City Witch Course →

A Second Urban Herbology Apprenticeship Group Opens for September

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[Update 06/9/26: This group is full. Please email Lynn if you’d like to be informed when the next apprenticeship course opens – probably starting March 2027]

The response to the newly redesigned Urban Herbology Apprenticeship has been really lovely.

The first September group, Linden, is now full. It has been wonderful to see the people joining this new version of the apprenticeship, and to read the thoughtful messages from those who have felt drawn to it.

But the enquiries kept coming so rather than turn people away simply because the first group’s workshop dates didn’t work for them, I’ve decided to open a second small apprenticeship group. It will also start in September 2026.

This group will be called Hawthorn.

The Hawthorn group

Hawthorn will follow the same apprenticeship structure as Linden, but the workshop days will be on Sundays.

There will be a maximum of six apprentices, meeting for ten workshop days throughout the year. Each workshop runs from 10:00–14:00 and is designed to be a substantial day of learning, making, exploring and spending time outdoors together.

The workshop dates are:

  • 27 September 2026
  • 25 October
  • 22 November
  • 24 January 2027
  • 14 February
  • 21 March
  • 18 April
  • 23 May
  • 27 June
  • 29 August

Between the workshops, apprentices have access to the Urban Herbology Library: an extensive collection of online lessons, recipes, plant information, practical guidance and other resources.

The Library is there to explore when you want to go down a rabbit hole, revisit something we have worked with together, download a recipe or deepen your knowledge of a particular plant.

But the in person workshops are the heart of the apprenticeship.

Learning together, in person

I have deliberately moved away from the idea of an apprenticeship being primarily an online course with assignments to complete. If you like, you can read more about why, in my previous post.

Instead, the year is built around coming together regularly and learning through experience.

We’ll work with plants, make things, explore local habitats, observe seasonal changes, share food and stories, practise skills and spend plenty of time outside.

The online material supports all of this, giving you somewhere to continue exploring between workshops without turning the apprenticeship into a long list of homework.

You don’t need to arrive knowing everything about plants. Curiosity, willingness to learn and an interest in developing a deeper relationship with the natural world around you are much more important.

Rooted in the place where we live

Urban Herbology is particularly interested in what becomes possible when we pay attention to the nature that is already around us.

That might mean discovering useful plants growing beside a city path, learning how to grow herbs in a tiny garden or large allotment, understanding seasonal plants and foods, making simple herbal preparations, or developing the confidence to recognise and respectfully interact with the plants of our everyday surroundings.

It is also about community.

The apprenticeship is intentionally small so that there is time to get to know one another and to learn together over the course of a whole year.

Applications are now open

There are six places available in the Hawthorn group.

If the Sunday dates work for you and the apprenticeship sounds like something you’d like to explore, you can read the full details and register here:

Join the Urban Herbology Apprenticeship

If you have questions before deciding, you’re very welcome to get in touch.

I am looking forward to seeing what grows from this second small circle of apprentices.

Linden is full. Hawthorn is now open.

Reconnect with Nature: Urban Herbology Apprenticeship Program

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For nearly fifteen years, I have been helping people to discover the edible, medicinal and useful plants growing around them. Over that time, hundreds of people have joined me on walks, workshops and apprenticeship courses, each bringing their own questions, backgrounds and reasons for wanting to reconnect with nature.

The apprenticeship has grown alongside them.

Like many long-running courses, it gradually became bigger. New modules appeared. More videos, links, recipes. Every year I added another layer somehow, wanting to share everything I had learned.

Recently, I found myself asking a different question.Not, “What else could I teach?” But, “How do people learn this best?” And naturally, the answer was quite simple. My apprentices don’t learn best by sitting behind a screen, rushing through hundreds of plant profiles or downloading endless PDFs. They have learned best by doing and returning. They tell me they’ve loved walking together through the seasons, sitting around talking over cups of herbal tea, making remedies with their own hands, smelling plants, exploring them, asking questions, sharing discoveries and gradually becoming familiar with the place where they live.

So this autumn, the Urban Herbology Apprenticeship begins a new chapter.

The heart of the course will become ten seasonal workshop days, held throughout the year in Amsterdam. We will spend time together indoors, out on walks, and at my allotment (volkstuin), learning through experience as much as through explanation. Each gathering will follow the rhythm of the season and the plants that are ready to meet us.

Alongside the workshops sits an extensive online library that I have been building for many years. Rather than replacing the practical learning, it supports it. Recipes, videos, demonstrations, downloadable notes and deeper explorations will be there whenever you want to revisit a topic or disappear happily down one of those wonderful herbal rabbit holes.

We’ll explore four connected themes throughout the year.

Urban Plants — learning to recognise and understand the plants growing around us.

The Urban Apothecary — creating safe, practical herbal remedies from local species.

Urban Foodcraft — bringing wild and cultivated plants into the kitchen through seasonal recipes, fermentation and preservation.

Regenerative Urban Living — gardening, biodiversity, household crafts and simple ways to live more gently alongside nature.

Instead of trying to know hundreds of plants, we’ll spend time getting to know around thirty local species really well. By the end of the apprenticeship, you’ll have built your own Urban Materia Medica, created remedies and foods from plants you’ve gathered yourself, and developed a much deeper relationship with the landscape around you.

For me, this feels like a return.

Many years ago, my first apprenticeship groups gathered around my kitchen table before we headed out to forage together. Those days remain some of my happiest memories of teaching. This new version brings that atmosphere back, enriched by everything I have learned since then.

If you’ve ever wanted to feel more at home where you live, to recognise the plants on your daily walk, to build confidence in making your own herbal preparations, or simply to become part of a small community of curious people learning together, I hope you’ll join us.

The first renewed apprenticeship begins this September.

I can’t wait to welcome the next group around the table.

For practical details about the course please see this page.

Images of autumn

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I’ve been busy with all sorts since my last post. There’s a little competition at the end of this one for those able to get to Amsterdam who fancy trying for a free Herbology Walk in Amsterdam oost. Work (school) has been lively. We’re fully open and yet the rest of the world seems to be closing up. Interesting times for all!

Am loving helping new Urban Herbology students on my courses – some are working so quickly on the Crafting Course, it’s great to see their enthusiasm!

I’ve been enjoying many walks in Amsterdam’s green spaces and was honoured to speak to a group at the Vrienden van Vrankendael’s celebration in Huize Frankendael’s coach house recently, about my involvement and hopes for the park. The guests were invited by the Vrienden van Frankendael and I spoke about the River of Herbs gardens. The Friends of Frankendael also featured us in the first article of their special 30 year celebratory magazine. The article is called Het eetbare park – The edible park. I’m very grateful to have been interviewed by them and especially humble to be so welcomed in the park.

Bench in one of the River of Herbs Orchards

Increasing capacity for multifunctional, sustainable urban edible spaces and community gardens is so important. City parks and planners can help enormously with this. I love discussing options for these spaces, with people who can help it to happen on a bigger scale.

Yew – Taxus

Marisa, one of my apprentices, graduated from the full course, in the woods, during one of the Witching Season gatherings. She has worked really hard on the course and I’m sure that good green things will continue to come from it! Marisa runs a fabulous vegan skincare company called Primal Essence and I love her products. Finally, they are available in Amsterdam!

Primal Essence

I’m now enjoying offering walking & talking consultations in Amsterdam and look forward to supporting more clients with personalised herbalism, reflexology and yoga. Details are on the Consultations page.

I thought that you may like to see a few photos from the past month or so.

So what have you been finding? Personally, I’m most pleased with the delights of the Virginia creeper grapes and Chinese Hawthorn, this season. Also the invisible strength building qualities of Michaelmus daisy.

Most people are writing to me about mushrooms this autumn. I must expand my confident-to-forage-and feed-my-family-fungi repertoire! Those shown above are for their beauty alone. I did eat the Jelly ear this evening. The others remain on the woodland floor, logs and benches where they belong – invisibly connecting life and death. Perfect organisms for teaching us about Samhain.

If you can tell me via email where this is, you’ll win a private 45 minute Herbology Walk in Amsterdam oost this autumn or winter! First person wins. Mutually convenient date and time to be arranged with the winner.

Herb Crafting Course

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To help more people to learn herbal crafting skills, to increase their self-sufficiency and health, I have now made the Urban Herbology Crafting Course available as a stand alone course.

The Crafting Course has been part of my Apprenticeship course for many years (that contains courses about Urban Foraging, Seasonal Spirituality, Urban Herb Gardening and Wise Woman Healing, Natural Remedies, Ferments and Food). It remains part of that package, for people who have plenty of time to commit and want to thoroughly immerse themselves in Urban Herbology. But I know that many people don’t have that time or the finances to enable participation in the Apprenticeship, but they do need to learn the herb crafting skills.

The Urban Herbology Crafting Course is very practical and teaches you how to safely make dozens of different types of preparations from herbs. It is set up as 33 online lessons, with straightforward assignments based on the herbal preparations that you are learning to make.

There is lots of support, a private Facebook group and student forum. It’s a lot of fun, is self paced (so complete as fast or slow as you like) and it is very good value! There is even a discount for college or uni students and for members of the Herb Society. Pricing starts at €12 per month.

For details of the course and how to sign up, please follow this link.