Category Archives: apprenticeship

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.