The Elder Tree

The Elder Tree The Elder Tree is dedicated to supporting grassroots herbal education and community herbalism. Putting the medicine in the hands of the people!

We recently interviewed Kimberly Kling of Joyful Roots on the Sacred Herbalism segment of the Elder Tree Podcast. Kimber...
27/10/2025

We recently interviewed Kimberly Kling of Joyful Roots on the Sacred Herbalism segment of the Elder Tree Podcast. Kimberly is a clinical herbalist and founder of Joyful Roots in Southern Arizona. Through earth-centered care, education, and small-batch herbal creations, she helps her community nurture wellness and deepen their connection with nature.
Her love of plants began in childhood, crafting “magical stews” from Michigan’s wild flora. With a background in Landscape Architecture and Engineering, Kimberly has long explored the relationship between people and the land. Motherhood and a personal health journey eventually guided her to clinical herbalism, where she now blends traditional wisdom with modern practice to support vibrant, grounded well-being.
Kimberly also runs a podcast, Remedy & Rhyme, which weaves poetry and plant wisdom.

In this episode, The Earth Needs More Herbalists, topics explored include the growing need for herbalists in modern times, the importance of health sovereignty, and the environmental cost of pharmaceuticals. Through reflections on plants like blue vervain and rose, Kimberly invites us to remember the mutuality of our relationship with nature and our role as its stewards.
Link to this episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-elder-tree-podcast/id1646328719?i=1000716729919

Kimberly has donated a beautiful zine all about Rose, which includes recipes utilising Rose, myth, herbal properties and more...exclusive to our paid Patreon members!
Become a patron:
https://www.patreon.com/TheElderTree?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creatordeo

Are you subscribed to The Elder Tree mailing list?  The downside of social media is that you won't always see important ...
27/10/2025

Are you subscribed to The Elder Tree mailing list? The downside of social media is that you won't always see important news and updates about the project (and there is a lot of exciting news and updates!)

You can subscribe to our mailing list here:
(you only get about 2 emails per moonth)
https://theeldertree.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=346fc33c7988220e46156d3a7&id=473d96ff49

You can see our recent mailout that went out today. It is a moonthly mailout about our podcast:
https://mailchi.mp/9459c2d23994/podcastmoonthlymailout-10350545

Unsubscribe anytime.
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22/10/2025

*Foundations of Sociocracy in-person 2-day training with Erin Young *
Sociocracy is a decentralised organisational governance system, helping organisations operate responsively and adaptively. Sociocracy supports self-organisation and distributed leadership, where everyone knows how to use their voice and work together effectively, transparently and with equal-value. Types of organisations using sociocracy include businesses, intentional communities, workers cooperatives, and faith-based groups.
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When every member of an organisation contributes to collaboration for collective aims, creativity, healthy relationships and results shine.

This two-day in-person experience builds fundamental collaboration skills - as provided by the sociocratic circle-organisation method (SCM). Such skills help people and groups be responsive and adaptive in real-world conditions with consent-based practices.

This training is participatory, engaging and inclusive - embracing dynamic and simulation-based activities. The practice of these foundational processes happens in a dynamic fictional organisation, mirroring common life experiences and group dynamics.

By course completion, participants are inspired to deepen their practice of responsive collaboration with the wind of sociocracy foundational skills firmly in their sails.
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This course is for you if:
- you’re actively engaged in a small to medium sized group or organisation, and
- your group is willing or curious to decentralise leadership and engage members with their natural creativity and perspective, and
- your group is willing to learn to operate by the values of effectiveness, equivalence and transparency.

_
EVENT DETAILS
Saturday 22nd November & Sunday 23rd November, 2025
9am to 4.30pm, daily.
The Jade House
Belaya Buyul community
Main Arm, NNSW
Morning and afternoon tea provided.
BYO a simple & delicious plate to share for lunch.

Elder Tree members: $225pp
Broader Community: $300pp
Become a member of The Elder Tree here:
https://www.theeldertree.org/becomeamember

Purchase your ticket here:
https://events.humanitix.com/the-elder-tree-foundations-of-sociocracy-in-person-training

Then RSVP on the event page to be kept up to date:
The Elder Tree Foundations of Sociocracy in-person training

** Please note that The Elder Tree organises sociocracy training like this every year for our volunteers. If we don't have enough volunteers and members who can attend then we open it up to the public. **
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ABOUT THE TRAINER / Erin Young helps create a more beautiful world by working with nature-informed practices to activate for-impact operators/organisations with creativity and collaboration. She is a consulting member of The Sociocracy Consulting Group, having worked with the methodology since 2012.
Erin holds a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering (Hons) with Brisbane’s Griffith University (2004). She first studied regenerative ecologically-based design by attaining her first Permaculture Design Certificate in Portugal in 2010.
Originating in Brisbane, Erin is now based near Eumundi on the Sunshine Coast, South East Queensland, where she forest-bathes in between mothering and baking sourdough bread.
Find out more about Erin and access her offerings here:
https://www.erinyoung.net/sociocracy
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** Please note that this 2-day training is fully refundable minus a 10% admin fee, if you cancel up to one week before the training begins.

Send a message to learn more

🌳An update on The Elder Tree medicine garden,  and an invitation to our visioning/mapping session this Tuesday🌳Over the ...
12/10/2025

🌳An update on The Elder Tree medicine garden, and an invitation to our visioning/mapping session this Tuesday🌳

Over the past 5 weeks we've had 7 working bees with an amazing crew of beautiful souls clearing the site, composting a lots of plants and laying down truckloads of mulch. It's been wonderful rewarding work.
Last week we got the portal/ entrance erected which is exciting (big thanks to Damo and Mikaela for having the vision and making it happen).

At each working bee we share lunch and share visions, ideas, concepts for the space. But now the site is ready to really get mapped out, so we are meeting on Tuesday 14th Oct at 10am to get out the tape measure and paper, and really dream up the space then strategise the plan to make it happen!

All are welcome. Bring some food or drink to contribute if you can. We would love to have some signs painted so if you have some paint and skills we would love that... you could be painting while we are mapping the site, just to bring in some creativity and colour to the day!

Also here is our manifestation list for anyone that has the following for free or cheap please:

Our manifestation list:
- Posts for outer boundary (to go in the ground)
- ⁠Birdbath
- ⁠Garden Edging (timber)
- ⁠Stones for herb spiral and garden walls
- ⁠Pieces of timber/tin etc (suitable for painting signs on)
- ⁠Outdoor paint for signs
- ⁠Worm farms
- ⁠Bench and big double sink
- ⁠Shade structures
- ⁠Native bee hive

******
Location: 156 Stuart St Mullumbimby.
Park on the street near the Reforestnow entrance, and walk in.
Google maps pin drop:

https://goo.gl/maps/pKAqagaFmfwQRVq9A

🌳 Working Bee tomorrow! 🌳We are preparing a patch of Earth to create a beautiful medicine garden in Mullumbimby.Come joi...
24/09/2025

🌳 Working Bee tomorrow! 🌳
We are preparing a patch of Earth to create a beautiful medicine garden in Mullumbimby.

Come join us for our next working bee tomorrow (Thursday 25th).
We meet 8.30am and work/play until 11.30.
Then we will have a picnic and visioning circle from 11.30- about 12.30pm. We will dream up the space and work out the best strategies.

** Please bring a dish of food/drink to share **
** We don't have many tools yet so bring your own gardening gloves and your preferred tools if you have any **

These details are the same for the subsequent working bees. On Friday 3rd and Tuesday 7th Oct.

We meet here:
https://goo.gl/maps/k5VzRRvKdAiNrZVu7
(Please park out on the road and walk in)

We will hold regular classes, courses, workshops and events and the medicine garden will be an educational garden for students. We will also produce medicine from the garden that will go to volunteers and surplus will be gifted to those in need/sold at a low cost for fundraising.

We are so excited to be doing our part in building community resilience and coherence and connection.

Get in touch if you want to join us! Also, we have a Whatsapp group for volunteers so let us know if you want to be added to that.

We are looking for donations of garden tools and landscaping resources and things like bark mulch, frames to set up shade etc etc.

Get in touch if you have some resources to share: info@theeldertree.org

The Elder Tree is a registered not for profit and we welcome financial contributions. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, please let us know!

To find out more about The Elder Tree go to www.theeldertree.org

🌳 SPRING EQUINOX NEWSLETTER 🌳We are excited to announce the first release of our seasonal quarterly newsletter!!  This i...
23/09/2025

🌳 SPRING EQUINOX NEWSLETTER 🌳
We are excited to announce the first release of our seasonal quarterly newsletter!! This is a news rag not just for The Elder Tree but for the national herbal community. It features articles and recipes from wonderful herb folk around Australia (and one in NZ) and features a national herbal directory.

This one is free to the public but subsequent editions will be free to our members and patrons, then available by donation to the broader public.

Thanks to our editing team Caitlin Moore and Tatiana Dawn for making it happen, and thanks to all the wonderful herbal wisdom carriers who contributed.

Check it out here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZGwOCM4LbrjeNtbxYa6wd8iOh_sJgLg/view?usp=sharing

---------------------------------------------------

This newsletter is published quarterly, seasonally, every solstice and equinox. Please get in touch if you would like to submit an article- they can be small or long. Herbal Medicine focused of course.

It could be about growing medicine, making medicine, it could be a herbal monograph, a story, wildharvesting, herbal astrology/energetics, herb craft like dyeing and weaving, herbal poetry... the sky is the limit. Art/drawings would be amazing too!!!

And we would love more lovely folk on the creation team to help create the newsletter, and help us to get the medicine in the hands of the people.

Get in touch if you would like to contribute.

We are having a little potluck gathering for volunteers of The Elder Tree. To celebrate the third birthday of our podcas...
20/09/2025

We are having a little potluck gathering for volunteers of The Elder Tree. To celebrate the third birthday of our podcast (on the spring equinox) and to create a space for the growing family to connect.

If you are a casual or regular volunteer of The Elder Tree then you are welcome! Just let us know and we will send you the address of our founder Tatiana's home in The Pocket.

We set up The Elder Tree tipi today- a 30ft tipi so we have a lovely space to gather.
From 11am. We are sharing lunch and connecting. Perhaps we will have a little fire and sing songs and tell stories.... see what flow emerges for the day.

info@theeldertree.org

Are there any wonderful souls out there who would like to write an article for The Elder Tree quarterly newsletter?  You...
18/09/2025

Are there any wonderful souls out there who would like to write an article for The Elder Tree quarterly newsletter? You could do it as a once-off or have your own column in the newsletter that releases every solstice and equinox.

Please get in touch if you would like to submit an article- they can be small or long. Herbal Medicine focused of course. It could be about growing medicine, making medicine, it could be a herbal monograph, a story, wildharvesting, herbal astrology/energetics, herb craft like dyeing and weaving, herbal poetry... the sky is the limit.

Art/drawings would be amazing too!!!

And we would love more lovely folk on the creation team to help create the newsletter.

Get in touch if you would like to contribute.
info@theeldertree.org

** Image by Hans Christian Anderson

On the last full moon, we interviewed Monica Francia (she/her) on our Sacred Herbalism segment of the Elder Tree podcast...
17/09/2025

On the last full moon, we interviewed Monica Francia (she/her) on our Sacred Herbalism segment of the Elder Tree podcast.

Monica is a consulting naturopath, medicine maker, teacher, and medicinal herb farmer at Hop Valley Herb farm- a beautiful small scale, organic and bio-dynamic farm in lutruwita / Tasmania. Monica runs workshops and classes on embodied, bioregional herbalism. She also coordinates Herbalists Without Borders Hobart- a community grassroots non-profit providing accessible health care in Nipaluna/Hobart and surrounds and she runs multiple free clinics.

During the interview, Stephanie and Monica dive into a many-layered and nuanced topic: how do we avoid the commodification of herbs? In a world so steeped in capitalism, it can feel almost impossible not to see plants as products — especially when many of us make our livelihoods through selling them in some form. But what might it look like to shift perspective, to honour plants not as commodities, but as living beings, companions, teachers, and allies?

Monica offers a thoughtful lens from her work as both practitioner and grower, and the conversation invites us all to reflect on our own relationships with plants.

You can listen to the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4z6ZeJEyQXtDJpSLY2GXlH?si=X0W-bAAITWCjhWcVZw-7Dw

Over on our Patreon is a very generously gifted ebook exclusive to our Patrons! Monica has crafted this ebook on all things medicine making- terminology, constituents, and the many ways you can use plants as medicine- all in your own home.

Become a Patron of the Elder Tree to gain access to this beautiful offering 🌱

https://www.patreon.com/TheElderTree

Wonderful to have Monica Francia, Naturopath, Herbalist and Nutritionist back on the podcast.
16/09/2025

Wonderful to have Monica Francia, Naturopath, Herbalist and Nutritionist back on the podcast.

🌳 Working Bee tomorrow! 🌳We are preparing a patch of Earth to create a beautiful medicine garden in Mullumbimby.Come joi...
13/09/2025

🌳 Working Bee tomorrow! 🌳
We are preparing a patch of Earth to create a beautiful medicine garden in Mullumbimby.

Come join us for our next working bee tomorrow Sunday 14th Sept.
We meet 8.30am and work/play until 11.30.
Then we will have a picnic and visioning circle from 11.30- about 12.30pm. We will dream up the space and work out the best strategies.

** Please bring a dish of food/drink to share **
** We don't have many tools yet so bring your own gardening gloves and your preferred tools if you have any **

These details are the same for the subsequent working bees.

We meet here:
https://goo.gl/maps/k5VzRRvKdAiNrZVu7
(Please park out on the road and walk in)

We will hold regular classes, courses, workshops and events and the medicine garden will be an educational garden for students. We will also produce medicine from the garden that will go to volunteers and surplus will be gifted to those in need/sold at a low cost for fundraising.

We are so excited to be doing our part in building community resilience and coherence and connection.

Get in touch if you want to join us! Also, we have a Whatsapp group for volunteers so let us know if you want to be added to that.

We are looking for donations of garden tools and landscaping resources and things like bark mulch, frames to set up shade etc etc.

Get in touch if you have some resources to share: info@theeldertree.org

The Elder Tree is a registered not for profit and we welcome financial contributions. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, please let us know!

To find out more about The Elder Tree go to www.theeldertree.org

Address

156 Stuart St
Mullumbimby, NSW
2482

Website

http://linktr.ee/TheElderTree, https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-elder-tree-podcast/i

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