2025 Garden States Workshops
Featured
There are a number of medicinal and psychoactive in the Solanaceae family. This workshop will describe the potential benefits and risks of utilising Solanaceae species. How anticholinergics work and the delirium state they can induce. The history and cultural context of which our collective understanding of how to use these plants stems from, including issues of biopiracy and why some have become commercialised.
Mushroom cultivation need not be limited to artificial growing environments or lab style cultivation techniques. An outdoor EGA provides us with the perfect opportunity to learn some hands on techniques for capturing, cultivating and spreading mycelium from the wild, to grow mushrooms in our own backyards, or for potentially rewilding local areas with native mushrooms, sadly removed through poor horticultural practice.
A variety of techniques will be covered, with opportunities to ask questions and discuss a variety of garden scenarios.
A beginner's guide to growing Acacia at home that explores botanical classification, uses, ethnobotanic species, identification techniques and resources, conservation, germination, cultivation, and planting out. This workshop aims to make tree growing accessible to all, with no prior experience, knowledge or greenhouse necessary. Participants will have the opportunity during the workshop to pot up their own seedlings to take home.
Wayapa Wuurrk®, meaning “Connect to the Earth” in the languages of the Maara and GunaiKurnai Peoples, is an Earth Mind Body Spirit wellbeing practice grounded in over 80,000 years of Aboriginal wisdom.
This workshop will cover key points from the harvest of fruiting bodies to the bottling process. It will feature practical examples of the dual extraction jar method, a description of triple extractions, the Spagyric process, Soxhlet distillation, and other extraction methods.
This workshop will explore the intersection of writing and psychedelics, and is open to writers of all stripes and levels of experience.
‘Drug, set, and setting’/‘dose, set, and setting’ have become the dominant rubrics for evaluating factors that can influence a drug experience. I propose that these rubrics can also be applied to the writing process
San Pedro are psychedelic, columnar, mescaline-containing cacti, originating in the Andes Mountain Range. There are thirty or more species in the San Pedro group, as well as intergeneric hybrids and cultivars selectively bred for potency, coloured flowers, unique forms and many other various qualities attractive to humans.
This participatory workshop invites anyone working in or alongside psychedelic healing spaces - therapists, healers, facilitators, guides, trip sitters, and others - to come together in the spirit of shared imagination and collaboration, to co-make stories for the future of psychedelic healing in Australasia.
This will be a hands-on session dedicated to the propagation of Banisteriopsis caapi, aka "Ayahuasca" vine at the heart of traditional medicine and ethnobotanical research. This 60-minute workshop will blend plant propagation theory, practical technique, and an interactive demonstration to teach plant enthusiasts of all experience levels the skills needed to propagate this fascinating species.
Introduction to Ethnobotany: Connecting to Nature Through Native Edible and Medicinal Plants is a 60-minute hands-on workshop led by qualified ethnobotanist Jessica Moulynox.
With nearly 20 years of experience in wild food foraging and a background in Environmental Science (majoring in Plant Biology and Indigenous Studies), Jessica offers a rich, engaging session that reconnects people with the edible and medicinal plants of their local landscape.
Acacias and eucalypts are defining trees in many landscapes throughout Australia. Learn to identify these genera with a workshop and walk that explores distinct botanical features, key resources and approaches to identification in the field. The workshop session will cover essential knowledge to undertake your own identification and will be followed by a ‘tree-walk’ to identify the trees of Gilwell Park.
The prohibition and specific regulatory practices applied to psychoactive substances by politicians and bureaucrats over time are complex. Voices of those most affected by their decisions have mostly been systematically silenced or ignored. In few other spaces are these themes as present, sharp or high-stakes than in the area of opioid dependence. While traditional psychedelic drugs are undergoing a renaissance, other plant-based medicines, opium, heroin and their many derivatives, have occupied significant and ongoing institutional attention over the past two centuries; arguably continuing to this day.
Step into a creative space where you'll explore the transformative power of creativity as both a path of inquiry and a form of expression - supporting integration through an embodied, intuitive approach. This workshop invites you to pause, tune in, and follow the creative spark within.
Since the beginning, humans have crafted tools to shift perception, shaping firelight into ceremony, plants into portals, and breath into revelation. Today, those thresholds shimmer in pixels and code, yet the longing remains the same: for wholeness, connection and mystery.
How can psychedelic therapy be both scientifically robust and deeply relational? How do we honour the body, the mind, the transpersonal, and the social-political context of each journeyer? Psychedelic experiences can plunge us into vast, beautiful, or bewildering inner territory. For both therapists and journeyers, one can feel out of their depth. Without clear frameworks for understanding what arises, we may miss opportunities for healing, or struggle to integrate the gifts and challenges of altered states.
Roadside drug testing has become increasingly common in recent years, with a particular focus on music festivals. This presentation and information session aims to outline the mechanisms of saliva drug testing and the substances it detects, some of which are not necessarily drugs themselves.
How do we reawaken our ancestral intelligence and repair our broken relationship with the Earth?
Humankind has long known how to respond to ecological collapse, yet our collective action remains tepid. We have an intellectual grasp of the crisis, but not an embodied one. Modern civilisation has lost the visceral, lived Connection to Country that First Nations peoples have always known — a deep physiological awareness of belonging to the biosphere.
This practical and experiential workshop explores the sacred and practical art of seed saving, propagation and cultivating relationships with plants as a pathway to regeneration. Together we will learn easy propagation techniques for vines, cacti and seeds, alongside discussions on ancestral varieties of edible plants, seed viability and storage for conservation.
Psychedelically Aware has been running talking circles through The PATCH for 3 years. This workshop discusses the insights gained from the community regarding harm reduction approaches to taking psychedelics and encourages attendees to be a part of the discussion.
A walk through how to create greater safety when choosing to have a psychedelic experience is the core of this workshop.