2025 Workshops
Creating a Cutting Garden
with Becky Crowley
Friday 28 February 2025
Saturday 1 March 2025
Learn how to plan and grow a cutting garden with cut flower grower, designer and artist Becky Crowley.
Drawing on her experience at Chatsworth House, Floret Flower Farm and Raby Castle Becky will go through her process for planning a cutting garden to achieve a succession of flowers throughout the year.
£140.00
For more details click here
Natural Garden Structures
with Alison Jenkins
Friday 7 March 2025
Saturday 8 March 2025
Thursday 13 March 2025
Friday 14 March 2025
Learning how to work with the natural qualities of materials such as hazel and willow enables you to create practical structures which support or protect your plants whilst also adding visual interest to the garden throughout the year.
We’ll create various small scale plant supports then look at some of the larger structures in place at Damson Farm to discuss how the skills you have learnt may be applied on a bigger scale.
£140.00
For more details click here
The Regenerative Edible Garden
with Alison Jenkins
Friday 28 March 2025
Friday 9 May 2025
The regenerative edible garden looks a little different to a conventional vegetable garden. It’s a bit wilder, looser and soft around the edges. There are fewer straight lines, a lot of flowers and and plenty of unusual, perennial and ornamental edible plants. It’s teeming with life and energy, as insects and birds flit about and nutrient dense food thrives in soil rich with an active ecosystem of microbiology.
Spend the day exploring what makes an edible garden regenerative and come away with some practical ideas about how to apply a regenerative approach to your own garden.
£140.00
For more details click here
Wild Urban Gardens
with Steve Williams
Friday 2 May 2025
Encouraging wildlife and biodiversity into our urban spaces has become an urgent issue. Steve Williams is an established designer who is passionate about finding innovative solutions to creating affordable, ecological city gardens.
In this workshop he’ll share his design approach which will be useful for professionals as well as those looking for inspirational ideas for bringing the wild into their own gardens.
£140.00
For more details click here
Wild Writing
with James Canton
Thursday 5 June 2025
Writing can offer a way of deepening our relationship to the natural world. Whether that’s private observations of seasonal changes in a garden journal or an article, story or newsletter that’s intended for a wider audience.
James Canton leads the MA in Wild Writing at Essex University. His latest book, Renaturing, focuses on his attempts to bring nature back to a small field near his home.
In this workshop he will explore themes of observation, deep time, spirit of place and offer useful writing techniques. There will be time for talking, writing and reflection with one to one sessions built into the day.
All levels welcome, no prior experience of writing is expected. The day is intended to feel accessible to anyone who is curious to explore the process of writing and there will be no expectation for you to share your work if you prefer not to.
£140.00
For more details click here.
Wild Cordage
with Alice Fox
Friday 13 June 2025
Alice Fox is a textile artist who works with natural fibres. In this workshop we will gather and process plant material such as nettles and brambles to extract the fibre and twist them into string (cordage).
We will learn about the creative ways in which our ancestors transformed plants into beautiful and useful objects and Alice will bring along some examples of how she has used cordage in her art practice
.£140.00
For more details click here
Photo: Tessa Bunney
Gardening for the Microbiome
with Sid Hill
Friday 27 June 2025
Saturday 28 June 2025
In this one day workshop we will explore the human microbiome, what it is and how it effects our health. We will discover how we as gardeners can cultivate gardens teaming with microbes that nourish the soil, feed healthy plants and act as a probiotic on our health. We will explore which plants are best for supporting microbes in the garden and in our gut microbiome.
Sid Hill is an ecological gardener, designer and educator based in Totnes, Devon. He won a gold medal for the Microbiome Garden for the Chelsea Flower show in 2024 which he co-designed with Chris Hull.
£140.00
For more details click here
Natural Farming
with Joshua Sparkes
Friday 4 July
Joshua Sparkes has been experimenting with innovative approaches to growing food at Birch Farm in Devon over the last four years.
He is passionate about finding creative solutions to the challenges of growing food alongside a thriving ecosystem whilst also running a viable business which supplies year round produce to the local pub, village shop and wider community.
In this workshop he’ll share some of the lessons learnt with this pioneering project. He will discuss the untapped potential of perennial vegetables, experiments with syntropic agriculture, the role of weeds within a diverse polyculture, why he doesn’t use compost and why boosting biodiversity and producing food are of equal priority on the farm.
£140.00
For more details click here.
Harvesting Autumn
Creative cooking with unusual edibles
with Beth Alexander
Friday 5 September 2025
Come and share the seasonal abundance here at Damson Farm. Beth Alexander will be here for the day to share her passion for creative and sustainable cooking. There will be ideas for working with some unusual edibles, reducing food waste, practical tips for preserving and creative ways of using seasonal gluts from our gardens, allotments and hedgerows.
Beth will cook up a delicious lunch and we’ll make some preserves in the afternoon which you can take home.
Beth (nee al Rikabi) is a local forager, food writer and retreat chef with 20 years experience. She is also known as The Free Range Chef.
For more details click here
Photo: Matt Inwood
Cultivating Presence
Reassessing how and why we garden
with Alys Fowler
Friday 12 September 2025
“The wonderful Annie Dillard once wrote ‘how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives’ in an essay on existential tensions between presence and productivity. I often think of this essay when gardening, because how we garden is also a measure of who we are.
Let us come together to explore this idea. Let us examine how and why we garden and look for ways in which we might create better relations with these places and all those that dwell in them, from the soil community to the many more-than-humans who call our gardens home.” Alys Fowler
£140.00
For more details click here.
Photo: Roo Lewis
Soil, Sand and Sward
with Sarah Price
Friday 19 September 2025
Sarah has been developing her own 2 acre garden on the edge of the Black Mountains over the last few years. It is here that she has had the freedom to experiment with different techniques and observe how plants respond in harsh environments such as low nutrient substrate or a competitive grassy sward.
In this workshop Sarah will discuss her influences and share what she has learned from her experiments as she has observed how her garden has evolved.
Sarah Price is one of Britain’s most respected garden designers. Her work is inspired by her life long love of wild landscapes and her fine art training.
£140.00
For more details click here
Visual Story Telling
Developing a personal style in garden photography
with Eva Nemeth
Friday 10 October 2025
Saturday 11 October 2025
In this one day workshop Eva Nemeth will explore the art of visual story telling. She describes her approach as ‘quiet observation’ and says that it’s not so much about the equipment you use but developing a personal way of looking. The aim of the day will be to help you find your own focus to set you on the path to capture your own unique stories.
This is an advanced workshop, suitable for those already familiar with the settings on their DSLR or mirrorless cameras.
£160.00
For more details click here
Photo: Eva Nemeth
Drying Flowers
and Autumn Wreath
with Bex Partridge of Botanical Tales
Friday 26 September 2025
Bex will spend the morning explaining how to dry a wide range of different plants. She will then demonstrate how to make a beautiful autumn wreath in the afternoon. She will explain the methods she uses to ensure that her work is as sustainable as possible. There will be armfuls of Bex’s own grown flowers for you to work with and you will also be able to forage for additional material in the garden at Damson Farm.
£140.00
For more details click here.
Drypoint Etching
with Allie Sylvester
Friday 17 October 2025
Allie will introduce a straightforward approach to this printing technique which produces finely detailed images.
We’ll use the autumnal seedheads and skeletal structures in the garden at Damson Farm as inspiration.
You’ll create a series of A5 prints on specialist paper to take home.
Suitable for all levels of experience.
£140.00
For more details click here.
Experimental Painting
with Allie Sylvester
Saturday 18 October 2025
Allie will be demonstrating a number of creative techniques to achieve a wide variety of effects and will then encourage you to experiment for yourself.
We’ll be taking inspiration from the textured planting and patinated surfaces out in the garden at Damson Farm. Mossy walls, lichened stone, vintage galvanised planters and foliage all reveal intricate tones and textures on close inspection.
Suitable for all levels of experience.
£140.00
For more details click here.