HerbFest 2025 with the White Crane Academy

HerbFest 2025 with the White Crane Academy

Join us and your fellow herbalists, friends, students and practitioners for a week of camping, feasting, and frivolity in the Devonshire countryside.

HerbFest provides a much needed opportunity for a few days respite from our busy, working lives. It’s a chance to unwind and spend time in a beautiful, natural setting where we can deepen our knowledge of the plant world, strengthen relationships and ties within our community of colleagues and friends, swim in the river, overheat in the sauna, eat good food (prepared by our talented in house chef, Zofia) sing, dance and have a laugh together.

In what has become somewhat of a tradition, HerbFest 2025 will return to the lovely Yeo Farm, Topsham Bridge Hotel, Loddiswell, Devon.

To register your interest and book your camping spot, please click the link below to pay your non-refundable £50 deposit.

Price: Approximately £395 (less £50 deposit - this price may reduce depending on the number of attendees). The price includes:

• the full week’s camping;
• delicious food provided by our in-house chef;
• participation in the full programme of practical workshops, discussions, teachings and daily Qi Gong (for further details refer to the HerbFest 2025 programme below).

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer partial pricing, so if you’re unable to stay for the whole week the price will remain the same.

Please note attendees are to bring their own camping equipment.

WHEN?

Arrive from Saturday afternoon 12th July from 3pm

Depart Friday morning 18th July by 1pm

WHERE?

Yeo Farm Topsham Bridge Hotel
Yeo Farm Topsham Bridge Hotel, Loddiswell, Devon, TQ7 4DR

https://wildswim2sauna.com/

PROGRAMME OF EVENTS & WORKSHOPS:

*This session will comprise a combination of storytelling (demonstrating plants, habitats, ecosystems), story games, and workshopping on stories of ‘us and plants’ – a creative way to deepen your relationship with individual plants, led by Lisa Schneidau. https://www.lisaschneidau.co.uk/workshops/

Please see below for ‘Workshops – Further Information’

Further Information:

PRICE & ACCOMMODATION

Individual room SOLD OUT

Room share SOLD OUT

Camping + full board and participation in events programme - £395 (bring your own camping equipment)

DEPOSIT
The number of participants is limited. To secure your place, please register and pay a non-refundable £50 deposit through Ticket Tailor by 30th April 2025.

FULL PAYMENT
Please settle the remaining balance (approximately £345) by 1st June 2025. If the price of the ticket comes down we will let you know the reduced amount to pay.

REFUNDS
White Crane Academy (WCA) reserves the right to retain a £25 administration fee for cancellations before 1st June 2025 (in addition to the non-refundable deposit of £50). After 1st June 2025 the WCA will not issue any refunds.

DIETARY SPECIFICATIONS
Our wonderful cook, Zofia will be preparing all our meals. Although we will endeavor to meet specific preferences, they cannot be absolutely guaranteed. To help us in doing our best to meet your preferences, please select your preference when booking.

TRANSPORTATION

The nearest rail station to Yeo Farm is Ivybridge, which is about 10 miles away. Please specify if you are likely to travel to HerbFest by car or train when booking.

BRISTOL HERB GARDEN

Some of you are going to Bristol Herb Garden on Sunday 13th July to do the module on Pharmacognosy and Dispensing or just to spend some time in the garden. You may want to arrive at the HerbFest on the Sunday evening, which is fine. Please indicate if you are planning to arrive on the Sunday evening when booking.

If you plan to travel from HerbFest to Bristol, please indicate if you are willing to give people a lift from Yeo Farm to Bristol that day when booking.

EVENING PROGRAMME/ PARTY

Many of us have specialist clinical skills or knowledge of interesting topics. HerbFest gives us an opportunity to share these during the evening. Please let us know if you would like to give a short talk or demo’ on, for instance, leech therapy, yoga, facial rejuvenation massage, pharmacology, etc…all subjects and enthusiasms welcome!

Past HerbFest’s have uncovered some hidden talents amongst our community for those amongst us who might sing, play a musical instrument or have a talent for poetry. If this appeals to you please bring along your instrument, singing voice or spoken word. If not, there is always conversation, good food, star gazing or gin and tonics to be had instead.

PHOTOGRAPHS VISUAL/AUDIO IMAGES & RECORDINGS/COMMUNICATION

Any person who attends HerbFest 2025 grants permission to White Crane Academy (WCA) to record visual/audio images, including but not limited to, photographs, digital images, voices, sound or video recordings, audio clips, or accompanying written descriptions, and, without notifying such person, to use his or her name and such images for any purpose, including advertisements for future programmes and events.

If you would prefer that your image not be used, please email Fran at frances.pearlman:@whitecrane.academy

PERSONAL HEALTH & WELL-BEING

Any person who attends HerbFest 2025 is responsible for their health and well-being. HerbFest will involve physical activities such as Qi Gong and walking, as well as tasting and working with herbs. WCA is not responsible for any physical or non-physical harm/injury that might arise from the week’s activities. It remains the responsibility of each participant to judge the limits of his/her own physical condition.

Thanks for reading this far - we look forward to a great HerbFest!

Best wishes,

The White Crane Academy Team.

Some Extra Info regarding Workshops:

‘Drawing as a way of knowing’ – a workshop led by Eleanor Darley

Botanical art has a long history of being used alongside recording the medicinal properties of plants. This workshop will develop your understanding and knowledge of the plants in the Bristol Chinese Medicine Garden by connecting with them through drawing. You will experience how the artistic process itself can bring you into contact with the medicinal characteristics and nature of each plant.

Getting to know the herbal medicine you work with is of course integral to administering herbs. You can greatly enhance this skill by connecting to each plant as a living entity with character and temperament, with information imbibed through gestures, colours and form - and the relational impression it leaves on you.

Eleanor Darley is an artist and botanical art therapist. She will teach a drawing process we can easily work with as a tool to deepen our perception and understanding of plants.

It is not necessary to be an artist, it is in the experience of drawing that we will learn to respond intuitively to the plants, sensitively observing and listening. We will discover both meditative, imaginative, and joyful ways to reveal function and the resonance a plant might have to yourself, or a patient.

Taking the time to draw a plant is an unforgettable experience. You will no longer struggle to identify or remember its name but instead will carry its medicine deep in your memory.
On the day we will cover:

• Examples of art and artists bringing to life the medicine of the plant as a botanical study
• How art can expand perception and how to use Goethean observation.
• Clear easy go-to drawing techniques to facilitate a process of discovery, healing connection and build confidence.
• Reflecting on the interrelationships of form, function, feeling and resonance.
• Trusting your impressions, inner pictures and take-aways for treating others.

You will come away with a stage-by-stage artistic process for you to use instinctively when getting to know a plant. Expect to be surprised! The door will open to just how immediate and informative botanical drawing can be. You will also have a lovely collection of botanically inspired drawings to treasure!

Eleanor Darley makes the relationship with plants the centre of her work as an artist and art therapist. She trained in traditional medicine in Mexico, Anthroposophical therapeutic art, and is founder of The School of Botanical Arts which is based on acknowledging the medicinal properties of plants, and their effect on our physical and emotional wellbeing. For more information, go to: www.eleanorsara.com
A couple of reflections from past workshops:

“After that, I would love to do any training that you offer, or more classes. It was so profound to me to connect with the plants this way.” Melissa McConnell, Botanical Mindfulness Class 2021

“We were aware of the breathing element you brought - contraction and then loosening. We came to a place that felt so open, carefully and sensitively orchestrated. A phenomenal observation of the plants” Weleda UK, Pilot event Drawing Plants for Wellbeing, Sept 2021