I’m thrilled to announce this combination plant walk (or hike, really) and workshop at one of my all-time favorite places, Millard Canyon in Altadena! This is a day-trip style event – please see notes below about what to expect. More info will be emailed to attendees on the week of, including meetup location, so please ensure your email address is correct when checking out.

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Regenerate, from the Latin “regenerare” means literally: to create again. As craftspeople, plant people, lovers of this land, what does it mean to have regenerative gathering and dyeing practices? Is our presence and behavior fostering the land’s and endemic plants’ ability to regenerate, to create again?

During this plant walk – a healthy couple-mile trek through beautiful Millard Canyon in the Angeles National Forest – I’ll share with you one of the main ways I’ve shaped my dye practice into a form of direct, reciprocal action in support of this land and the plant beings who live here. Our lives, well-being, and ability to regenerate ever-entwined, we help them to create again and in turn, they help us to do the same.

On our walk we’ll gather abundant, overly opportunistic (“invasive”) plants potent with natural color, then back at our creekside camp will process them for dyeing in two ways: as immersion dyes (in dye pots) and as eco-prints (making direct leaf- and flower-prints).

Among the overeager non-native dye plants I’ll be sharing about are sticky snakeroot, Himalayan blackberry, fig, Spanish broom, eucalyptus, and more. Sample their colors with two different dye projects under the shady oaks and bay laurels along Millard Creek – just fifteen or so miles north of downtown LA, but another world entirely.

This is a time for abundant harvesting: the most prolific wild-harvesting I have or will ever recommend! An abundant harvest means abundant color, which will be our main focus during this walk and workshop. I’ll also share plenty about native plants we’ll encounter, and how our practice can support them and our shared ecosystem – including proper harvesting of non-natives (discouraging their spread), ethnobotanical (food, art, medicinal) uses, plant folklore and science, and more.

So excited to share this offering with you – hope to see you there!

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Please note:

• This is a weekday workshop (Thursday, June 16, 10am-2pm), which promises a low-key, lower-traffic outdoor experience! This is an option I’m testing out and will offer regularly if there’s enough interest.

• The Millard Canyon area offers extremely limited parking, so I’m offering 20% off for friends who sign up for the workshop and agree to carpool together! Feel free to reach out with any questions (erin@berbo.studio).