In this hands-on herbal workshop you’ll create a natural healing skin balm to take home, from the early spring plants like nettle, cleavers, dandelion, plantain, and chickweed. Learn their benefits, make a hot-infused oil and turn this into a personalised balm to restore your hard-working hands.
This hands-on herbal workshop focuses on creating a healing skin balm to take home that explores and utilises nature’s remedies for hard working hands.
We’ll begin with an overview of what we’ll make, then head outdoors (weather permitting) to explore the early spring plants around Denmark Farm, like nettle, cleavers, dandelion, plantain, and chickweed, discussing their benefits and tasting a fresh herbal tea.
After lunch, we’ll harvest flowers and make a hot-method infused oil, comparing it with cold infusions and exploring dandelion’s virtues. You’ll learn harvesting tips, pressing techniques, and balm formulation. Participants will blend, scent, label, and take home a personalised balm to nurture and restore your hard-working hands, plus a recipe handout for future use.
You will learn:
the healing benefits of early spring plants such as nettles, cleavers dandelion , plantain and chickweed.
the virtues of each part of a dandelion – leaves, roots and flowers.
how to make and taste a herbal tea.
other ways we can use the healing plants of spring and who they are suitable for.
how to harvest wild flowers and why they are good in skin balms
how to make an infused oil using the hot method,
how to use the cold infusing method and when it is appropriate to use.
how to blend, fragrance and store your healing balm.
All materials and tools will be provided, however there is an additional fee of £5 payable to the tutor in cash on the day as a contribution to the materials you’ll take home.
Your workshop tutor is:
Clare Lewis BSc (Hons) MNIMH Medical Herbalist
I am a qualified Medical Herbalist and a fully insured member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. I practice from an off grid Shepherds Hut near Tregaron. I love plants both cultivated and wild and love to share knowledge of how plants can help us. Practical workshops are a fantastic opportunity to experience fundamental skills used in traditional herbal medicine.
Herbal Medicine is humanity’s oldest form of healing, practiced in myriad forms all over the world. It is the foundation of modern medicine. A medical herbalist makes use of both traditional plant knowledge and modern scientific evidence in practice.
This project is part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, administrated and supported by the Cynnal y Cardi Team for Ceredigion County Council.
Clare Lewis BSc (Hons) MNIMH Medical Herbalist 
