Explore upcoming workshops & events
Tea Sip
Take a mindful moment before the holiday season begins in this guided plant sip. Together, we’ll practice tuning into our senses and connecting to a plant from the Penn Forest garden.
Participants will learn about a plant through their own experiences, community discussion, and herbal information shared by the facilitator, Carrie McCann.
All are welcome and no experience is necessary for this workshop.
This class is by donation.
Sign up here.
Garden Tuck In
It’s time to put the garden to bed for the season. We would love your help cutting stocks, taking down stakes, mulching beds, and getting the garden ready for the winter ahead.
Bring your own garden gloves and sturdy shoes. No gardening experience necessary. Come for the whole time or just the morning (10:00 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.) or afternoon (12:00 — 2:00 p.m.) shift.
RSVP to Laura Ramie via email at lramieart@gmail.com.
Allentown Night Market
Come visit us for a pop-up Death Cafe at the Allentown Night Market.
Sunset Garden Party
Join us in the garden to celebrate the end of season abundance. Pick bouquets to dry, harvest herbs for the winter, enjoy some tea from the garden, and learn to make your own flower press while you’re here.
Stop by anytime for fun, friends, and flowers.
This event is free and open to the public.
Creating through Grief: Floating Floral Art
In this workshop, participants will use flowers and other objects found in the garden to create their own temporary art. Inspired by the Buddhist practice of creating mandalas, we will practice arranging a flower design as a form of meditation with nature. At the end of our session, participants will engage in a community discussion around how this process may relate to our grief journey and any lessons we can bring back to our day to day lives.
Greeting Plants for Grief
Take a walk around the garden and get to know some of the plants that can help us through our grief journey. In this experiential session, we will not only learn the stories of different plants for grief and how they have been used through history, we will also have the chance to get to meet some of them up close and personal in the garden through our touch, smell, and taste, and community discussion.
Meet the Gardeners
Come out and get to know the herb and flower gardens, and the gardeners! Have you wondered how to cut fresh flowers or want to learn about some of the herbs in the garden? Now is your time to stop by and ask! Feel free to come any time during the time frame and take some herbs/flowers home with you.
No need to RSVP.
Make Your Own Tea from the Garden
Learn how to make tea, from start to finish, using plants from your very own garden. In this hands on session participants will learn about a few herbs that are great for a calming tea, how to dry them, and what to consider in the tea making process. Participants will leave with a few herbs from the garden to get started on their own at home. All experience levels are welcome in this guided practice.
Flower Essences
Flowers can be a potent part of our practice for well-being. A flower essence is a type of herbal preparation that works with the energetic essence of the plant and can offer great support for matters of the heart, our emotions, and our inner worlds. Essences are another way that we can work with and connect to plants.
Click here to sign up.
Mindfulness in the Garden
Mindfulness is defined by John Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness scholar, as paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. In today’s world, mindfulness has been studied a great deal and is shown to have benefits for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being alike.
In this session, we will engage in various mindfulness practices together using the beautiful garden space as our backdrop and our classroom. We will try on a few different activities, geared towards people who are grieving, so participants can explore the tools that work best for them. All experience levels are welcome in this guided practice.
Planting Seeds of Wellness
In this class, participants will plant seeds and consider what care practices we want to grow in our lives. Using our senses to ground us through the process, participants will be guided through a reflection and mindfulness practice as well as planting activity that supports us to plant seeds of wellness for this next season.
Participants will leave with new potted edible herbs and flowers that they can watch grow on their windowsill or plant in the ground, and enjoy delicious and calming teas using the herbs they grew later in the season. All experience levels are welcome in this guided experience.
Mindful Tea Sip
Get to know a garden herb through tuning into your senses and yourself. Take time to practice mindfulness and connecting to plants through this guided experience that will include:
- gentle movement to help ground us
- a guided plant sip using one of the herbs grown in the Penn Forest herb garden
- community discussion about what we noticed
- a small bag of herbs to take home with you to continue your practice
At the end of the class, enjoy an optional tour of the Penn Forest Natural Burial Park grounds.
Pay What You Want suggestion: $10-$20
Single Plant Deep Dive
Join us in this series where we will explore different ways to get to know just one plant. We will take time to build relationship, move slow, connect, sit with our plant friends, and learn about them from many different angles.
You will choose your own plant and will be guided through different activities, ways of researching and knowing, and practices to be with your plant friend so that you can start to get to know them or deepen the relationship you already have.
Tending to Ourselves: Integrative Yoga for Grief
Grief is not exclusive to death. There are so many different types of loss and things we grieve. We are in a time of deep release and no matter what kind of loss we are experiencing, our grief is worthy of being tended to.
This 3-part integrative yoga series is meant to encourage you to listen to your body’s wisdom, acknowledge your inner knowing, and create space to tend to your needs. Together, we will drink curated herbal tea blends, meditate, practice gentle and restorative yoga, and experience community journaling. Each experience is steeped in self-compassion - holding ourselves with love and care.
All are welcome and no experience is necessary. This space is for anyone who wants to be there, whether you are clear about what you are grieving or not. We all have emotions that reside and move within us. This is a soft landing to offer ourselves time, space, and care to be in touch with what is there and release what is ready (and perhaps lovingly acknowledge what is not). While we will hold space for reflection, folks will not be asked to share intimate feelings that may be tender, but encouraged to call upon their support teams if and when they need it.
Click here to learn more and sign up.
CommuniTea Meditation
Take some time to practice tuning into your senses and yourself, through a slow sip of your tea, a few words to guide you, and your breath.
What to expect:
- We’ll take a couple minutes to settle in.
- You’ll experience a 15-20 minute loosely guided tea sip and meditation. This is a different way to sit with yourself and your beverage.
- We’ll have a few minutes at the end for a share back, for anyone who wants to share about their experience or anything that came up for them.
This practice is for anyone who wants it. Whether you’re new or experienced. Whether you’ve been sitting with plants or practicing mindfulness for 10+ years or have never tried it. This is a space to take some time out of your day, just for you.
Click here to learn more and sign up.