Seasonal Foraging & Wellness Retreats
Gentle seasonal gatherings rooted in Irish herbal tradition. Explore foraging, plant wisdom and practical wellness rituals.
Seasonal Foraging & Wellness Retreats Ireland
Foraging • Herbal Making • Seasonal Food • Traditional Irish Plant Knowledge
A half-day immersive experience in beautiful West Waterford
There is something special about slowing down enough to notice what is growing around you.
The flowers, leaves, berries and seeds that appear throughout the year have their own seasons, and for generations people have worked with this natural abundance in the kitchen and home.
Join community herbalist Lynn of Natures Alchemy at beautiful Tourin Gardens in West Waterford for a hands-on seasonal herbal retreat where we explore the plants around us, learn traditional plant knowledge and discover practical ways of working with them.
We'll forage, make, taste, learn and share a seasonal lunch together.
And because the plants decide what is available, every retreat will be different.
A different experience in every season 🌿
One of the wonderful things about working with plants is that there is always something changing.
Spring brings fresh growth and young plants.
Summer brings flowers, leaves and an abundance of herbs.
Autumn brings berries, seeds, fruits and the beginning of preparations for winter.
Rather than creating the same workshop all year round, these retreats follow the seasons.
🌱 Spring
A season of new growth, fresh leaves and young plants.
Our spring retreat will focus on the plants emerging after winter, early seasonal foraging and ways of using fresh herbs in the kitchen and home.
☀️ Summer
The gardens are at their most abundant, with flowers, aromatic herbs and plenty to discover.
We'll explore the summer plants around us and look at ways of harvesting, using and preserving the seasonal abundance.
🍂 Autumn
The hedgerows and gardens become filled with berries, seeds, fruits and other autumn treasures.
Autumn is a wonderful season for gathering and preserving, and we'll explore traditional ways of working with the plants available at this time of year.
The plants decide what we make
The exact plants we discover and preparations we make will change throughout the year.
No two seasonal retreats will be exactly the same.
You could join us in spring and return in autumn to experience a completely different side of the garden.
From garden to kitchen to apothecary
The retreat isn't simply about identifying plants.
It's about learning what you can do with them.
We'll begin outside with a guided foraging walk through Tourin Gardens, learning to recognise seasonal plants and exploring their place in traditional Irish plant knowledge.
Then we'll bring some of what we've discovered back inside and get hands-on.
Depending on the season, we might make herbal preparations, preserve seasonal ingredients or prepare something delicious to eat.
You might find yourself making a wild herb pesto, creating an infused vinegar, preparing a seasonal syrup or learning how to make a traditional tincture.
Then we'll sit down together and enjoy some of what we've created.
Forage it. Make it. Eat it.
Learn through doing
Foraging and herbal knowledge have traditionally been passed from one person to another.
You learn by looking closely.
By asking questions.
By getting your hands involved.
By understanding the seasons.
And by doing it yourself.
That's why these retreats are designed to be small, practical and hands-on.
Rather than spending the morning sitting in a classroom, you'll be outside exploring the gardens, gathering seasonal plants and then learning how to work with them.
You'll have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and learn directly from Lynn.
No previous experience is needed.
If you're completely new to foraging, you're very welcome.
If you've already started exploring wild plants, you'll have the opportunity to deepen your knowledge and discover new ways of working with them.
Traditional Irish plant knowledge 🌿
At the heart of Natures Alchemy is a fascination with the relationship between people and plants.
Long before we could walk into a shop and buy everything we needed, people relied on their knowledge of the landscape around them.
They knew what appeared in spring.
What flowered in summer.
What berries ripened in autumn.
What could be gathered, preserved and stored for later.
Some of this knowledge has been passed down through generations, while much of it is now at risk of being forgotten.
Through these retreats, Lynn shares some of this traditional plant knowledge in a practical and accessible way.
It's an invitation to look at the landscape around us with fresh eyes.
Seasonal food and lunch
Plants aren't just for the apothecary.
Many of the plants we encounter while foraging can also inspire what we eat.
During the retreat, we'll bring seasonal and foraged ingredients into the kitchen and prepare some of the food we'll enjoy together.
Depending on the season, this might include:
🌿 Wild herb pesto
🫙 Herb-infused vinegar
🥗 Seasonal salads
🌱 Freshly foraged ingredients
☕ Herbal teas
We'll then sit down together for a relaxed seasonal lunch, with local, garden-grown and foraged ingredients wherever possible.
There will be time to enjoy the food, chat, ask questions and simply enjoy being in the gardens.
Make your own herbal preparations
The exact preparations will change with the seasons, but the retreats will include hands-on herbal making.
Previous and seasonal preparations may include:
🍯 Elderberry syrup
🍷 Hawthorn berry preparations
🌸 Red clover tincture
🌿 Lady's mantle tincture
You'll learn the basic process involved in making each preparation and create your own to take home.
The aim is to give you practical knowledge that you can continue exploring in your own kitchen and home apothecary.
Take the experience home with you
Your retreat doesn't end when you leave Tourin Gardens.
You'll receive a beautiful collection of resources and preparations to continue your journey at home.
📓 Your Natures Alchemy Foraging Journal
A printed foraging journal with space to record the plants you discover, where and when you find them, your observations, recipes and your own notes.
Use it during the retreat and continue filling it as the seasons change.
📖 Change of Seasons Wellness
You'll also receive a printed copy of the Natures Alchemy Change of Seasons Wellness guide to take home and explore throughout the year.
🌿 Your own herbal preparations
You'll take home the preparations you make during your retreat, with the exact selection depending on the season.
The aim is simple:
Learn it. Make it. Take it home.
Your morning at Tourin Gardens
While every retreat follows the season, you can expect your experience to include:
🌿 A guided seasonal foraging walk
🌱 Plant identification and traditional Irish plant knowledge
🫙 Hands-on herbal making
🥗 Seasonal and foraged food preparation
☕ Herbal tea and seasonal refreshments
🍽️ A relaxed seasonal lunch
📓 Your own Natures Alchemy Foraging Journal
📖 A printed copy of Change of Seasons Wellness
🌿 Herbal preparations to take home
The exact plants, preparations and food will be confirmed on the booking page for each seasonal retreat.
Why Tourin Gardens?
Set in the beautiful Blackwater Valley in West Waterford, Tourin Gardens provides a wonderful setting for exploring our relationship with plants.
The gardens give us the opportunity to experience plants where they grow, rather than only looking at dried herbs or photographs.
We can walk amongst them, observe the seasons changing and learn from the landscape itself.
It makes the experience feel less like a classroom and more like stepping into a living textbook.
Make a weekend of it 🌿
If you're travelling to West Waterford for the retreat, why not turn your visit into a weekend escape?
There is so much to explore in this beautiful part of Ireland, from historic Lismore and the River Blackwater to gardens, woodland, mountains, food and walking trails.
Stay in Lismore
Lismore Pods
Make historic Lismore your base for the weekend and enjoy the town, local food, walks and surrounding countryside.
Escape to the Comeraghs
The Getaway
For a peaceful countryside escape, The Getaway offers a beautiful base for exploring the Comeragh Mountains and surrounding landscape.
Retreat on Saturday. Explore West Waterford on Sunday.
Make a weekend of nature, food, foraging and traditional Irish plant knowledge.
Who is this experience for?
This seasonal herbal retreat is for anyone who would like to learn more about the plants growing around us and spend some time reconnecting with nature.
It is perfect if you:
🌿 Want to learn how to forage in Ireland
🌱 Are interested in Irish wild plants
🫙 Want to learn practical herbal making
🌸 Are curious about traditional plant knowledge
🥗 Enjoy seasonal food and cooking
🌳 Love spending time outdoors
📓 Want to develop your own foraging knowledge
✨ Are looking for a unique experience in West Waterford
No previous foraging or herbalism experience is required.
A small-group experience
Places are intentionally limited so that the retreat remains personal and hands-on.
There is time to ask questions, get involved and learn at a relaxed pace.
This isn't about rushing around trying to identify as many plants as possible.
It's about slowing down enough to really notice them.
To learn their names.
To understand their seasons.
To discover how people have traditionally worked with them.
And to begin building your own relationship with the plants around you.
Three seasons. Three different experiences.
Spring. Summer. Autumn.
Each brings different plants.
Different foods.
Different preparations.
Different stories.
The season determines what is growing.
What is growing determines what we make.
Come for one season or come back and experience them all.
🌿 Seasonal Herbal Retreat at Tourin Gardens
Foraging • Herbal Making • Seasonal Food • Traditional Irish Plant Knowledge
West Waterford, Ireland
Seasonal Herbal Retreat at Tourin Gardens
Foraging • Herbal Making • Seasonal Food • Traditional Irish Plant Knowledge
A half-day immersive experience in beautiful West Waterford
There is something special about slowing down enough to notice what is growing around you.
The flowers, leaves, berries and seeds that appear throughout the year have their own seasons, and for generations people have worked with this natural abundance in the kitchen and home.
Join community herbalist Lynn Shead of Natures Alchemy at beautiful Tourin Gardens in West Waterford for a hands-on seasonal herbal retreat where we explore the plants around us, learn traditional plant knowledge and discover practical ways of working with them.
We'll forage, make, taste, learn and share a seasonal lunch together.
And because the plants decide what is available, every retreat will be different.
A different experience in every season 🌿
One of the wonderful things about working with plants is that there is always something changing.
Spring brings fresh growth and young plants.
Summer brings flowers, leaves and an abundance of herbs.
Autumn brings berries, seeds, fruits and the beginning of preparations for winter.
Rather than creating the same workshop all year round, these retreats follow the seasons.
🌱 Spring
A season of new growth, fresh leaves and young plants.
Our spring retreat will focus on the plants emerging after winter, early seasonal foraging and ways of using fresh herbs in the kitchen and home.
☀️ Summer
The gardens are at their most abundant, with flowers, aromatic herbs and plenty to discover.
We'll explore the summer plants around us and look at ways of harvesting, using and preserving the seasonal abundance.
🍂 Autumn
The hedgerows and gardens become filled with berries, seeds, fruits and other autumn treasures.
Autumn is a wonderful season for gathering and preserving, and we'll explore traditional ways of working with the plants available at this time of year.
The plants decide what we make
The exact plants we discover and preparations we make will change throughout the year.
No two seasonal retreats will be exactly the same.
You could join us in spring and return in autumn to experience a completely different side of the garden.
From garden to kitchen to apothecary
The retreat isn't simply about identifying plants.
It's about learning what you can do with them.
We'll begin outside with a guided foraging walk through Tourin Gardens, learning to recognise seasonal plants and exploring their place in traditional Irish plant knowledge.
Then we'll bring some of what we've discovered back inside and get hands-on.
Depending on the season, we might make herbal preparations, preserve seasonal ingredients or prepare something delicious to eat.
You might find yourself making a wild herb pesto, creating an infused vinegar, preparing a seasonal syrup or learning how to make a traditional tincture.
Then we'll sit down together and enjoy some of what we've created.
Forage it. Make it. Eat it.
Learn through doing
Foraging and herbal knowledge have traditionally been passed from one person to another.
You learn by looking closely.
By asking questions.
By getting your hands involved.
By understanding the seasons.
And by doing it yourself.
That's why these retreats are designed to be small, practical and hands-on.
Rather than spending the morning sitting in a classroom, you'll be outside exploring the gardens, gathering seasonal plants and then learning how to work with them.
You'll have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and learn directly from Lynn.
No previous experience is needed.
If you're completely new to foraging, you're very welcome.
If you've already started exploring wild plants, you'll have the opportunity to deepen your knowledge and discover new ways of working with them.
Traditional Irish plant knowledge 🌿
At the heart of Natures Alchemy is a fascination with the relationship between people and plants.
Long before we could walk into a shop and buy everything we needed, people relied on their knowledge of the landscape around them.
They knew what appeared in spring.
What flowered in summer.
What berries ripened in autumn.
What could be gathered, preserved and stored for later.
Some of this knowledge has been passed down through generations, while much of it is now at risk of being forgotten.
Through these retreats, Lynn shares some of this traditional plant knowledge in a practical and accessible way.
It's an invitation to look at the landscape around us with fresh eyes.
Seasonal food and lunch
Plants aren't just for the apothecary.
Many of the plants we encounter while foraging can also inspire what we eat.
During the retreat, we'll bring seasonal and foraged ingredients into the kitchen and prepare some of the food we'll enjoy together.
Depending on the season, this might include:
🌿 Wild herb pesto
🫙 Herb-infused vinegar
🥗 Seasonal salads
🌱 Freshly foraged ingredients
☕ Herbal teas
We'll then sit down together for a relaxed seasonal lunch, with local, garden-grown and foraged ingredients wherever possible.
There will be time to enjoy the food, chat, ask questions and simply enjoy being in the gardens.
Make your own herbal preparations
The exact preparations will change with the seasons, but the retreats will include hands-on herbal making.
Previous and seasonal preparations may include:
🍯 Elderberry syrup
🍷 Hawthorn berry preparations
🌸 Red clover tincture
🌿 Lady's mantle tincture
You'll learn the basic process involved in making each preparation and create your own to take home.
The aim is to give you practical knowledge that you can continue exploring in your own kitchen and home apothecary.
Take the experience home with you
Your retreat doesn't end when you leave Tourin Gardens.
You'll receive a beautiful collection of resources and preparations to continue your journey at home.
📓 Your Natures Alchemy Foraging Journal
A printed foraging journal with space to record the plants you discover, where and when you find them, your observations, recipes and your own notes.
Use it during the retreat and continue filling it as the seasons change.
📖 Change of Seasons Wellness
You'll also receive a printed copy of the Natures Alchemy Change of Seasons Wellness guide to take home and explore throughout the year.
🌿 Your own herbal preparations
You'll take home the preparations you make during your retreat, with the exact selection depending on the season.
The aim is simple:
Learn it. Make it. Take it home.
Your morning at Tourin Gardens
While every retreat follows the season, you can expect your experience to include:
🌿 A guided seasonal foraging walk
🌱 Plant identification and traditional Irish plant knowledge
🫙 Hands-on herbal making
🥗 Seasonal and foraged food preparation
☕ Herbal tea and seasonal refreshments
🍽️ A relaxed seasonal lunch
📓 Your own Natures Alchemy Foraging Journal
📖 A printed copy of Change of Seasons Wellness
🌿 Herbal preparations to take home
The exact plants, preparations and food will be confirmed on the booking page for each seasonal retreat.
Why Tourin Gardens?
Set in the beautiful Blackwater Valley in West Waterford, Tourin Gardens provides a wonderful setting for exploring our relationship with plants.
The gardens give us the opportunity to experience plants where they grow, rather than only looking at dried herbs or photographs.
We can walk amongst them, observe the seasons changing and learn from the landscape itself.
It makes the experience feel less like a classroom and more like stepping into a living textbook.
Make a weekend of it 🌿
If you're travelling to West Waterford for the retreat, why not turn your visit into a weekend escape?
There is so much to explore in this beautiful part of Ireland, from historic Lismore and the River Blackwater to gardens, woodland, mountains, food and walking trails.
Stay in Lismore
Lismore Pods
Make historic Lismore your base for the weekend and enjoy the town, local food, walks and surrounding countryside.
Escape to the Comeraghs
The Getaway
For a peaceful countryside escape, The Getaway offers a beautiful base for exploring the Comeragh Mountains and surrounding landscape.
Retreat on Saturday. Explore West Waterford on Sunday.
Make a weekend of nature, food, foraging and traditional Irish plant knowledge.
Who is this experience for?
This seasonal herbal retreat is for anyone who would like to learn more about the plants growing around us and spend some time reconnecting with nature.
It is perfect if you:
🌿 Want to learn how to forage in Ireland
🌱 Are interested in Irish wild plants
🫙 Want to learn practical herbal making
🌸 Are curious about traditional plant knowledge
🥗 Enjoy seasonal food and cooking
🌳 Love spending time outdoors
📓 Want to develop your own foraging knowledge
✨ Are looking for a unique experience in West Waterford
No previous foraging or herbalism experience is required.
A small-group experience
Places are intentionally limited so that the retreat remains personal and hands-on.
There is time to ask questions, get involved and learn at a relaxed pace.
This isn't about rushing around trying to identify as many plants as possible.
It's about slowing down enough to really notice them.
To learn their names.
To understand their seasons.
To discover how people have traditionally worked with them.
And to begin building your own relationship with the plants around you.
Three seasons. Three different experiences.
Spring. Summer. Autumn.
Each brings different plants.
Different foods.
Different preparations.
Different stories.
The season determines what is growing.
What is growing determines what we make.
Come for one season or come back and experience them all.
🌿 Seasonal Herbal Retreat at Tourin Gardens
Foraging • Herbal Making • Seasonal Food • Traditional Irish Plant Knowledge
West Waterford, Ireland
A space to pause, walk, learn, stir, taste and reconnect, whatever season you arrive in.
Wellness is found in the slowing down, in the stirring, the sharing, and the stillness between.
You are very welcome to contact me directly or follow along on Instagram, where I share what is unfolding.
Upcoming and Events
Each gathering reflects the time of year and offers practical, accessible plant knowledge. Select a date below to book your place:
-
Sunday 20th September Autumn Retreat
🌿 New to foraging? Download our free What to Forage in Spring sample guide to get started or check out all our Ebooks here.
Private Bookings
Private and corporate wellness workshops are available for retreats, community groups, festivals and bespoke gatherings.
Enquire directly to discuss dates and themes.
Private Bookings
Private wellness workshops are available for retreats, community groups, festivals and bespoke gatherings.Enquire directly to discuss dates and themes.