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.