Winter Botany & Wild Foraged Tea w/ Marc Williams - Asheville, NC

When the lush greens and bright blooms of summer fade away, a quieter world of wonder remains. Join ethnobotanist, longtime Firefly instructor & beloved friend Marc Williams for an immersive workshop and garden walk exploring the art of winter plant identification and wild foraging.

Together, we’ll learn to recognize the subtle signatures of plants during their dormant phase—tracing patterns in bark, buds and form that reveal who’s who beneath the winter hush. Marc will guide participants in deepening their botanical literacy and relationship with local ecology, blending scientific insight with ethnobotanical wisdom and practical foraging knowledge.

As we walk the garden and surrounding landscape, we’ll:

• Practice identifying plants without their usual flowers, fruits, or leaves
• Discuss off-season plant characteristics and traditional uses
• Explore key resources for continuing your studies
• Share wild-foraged tea and connection to close the afternoon

Winter botany is a lesser-known, yet vital skill that invites us to see the natural world with new eyes. By learning to read the land in its quiet season, we strengthen our awareness, resilience, connection and capacity to live sustainably within our ecosystems—all year long.

This class will be held outdoors on Saturday, February 7th, 2026, from 12:30 pm – 4:00 pm near Asheville, NC.

All Firefly Gathering workshops are hosted in the greater Asheville area, sometimes at private venues. For that reason, the actual venue address will be included in your Welcome email, approximately one week before the workshop. Please note that classes are not actually held at Westgate Parkway.

This class is suitable for all levels of experience! The minimum age is 10 with an accompanying adult.

Stay in touch with our Facebook event: Winter Botany & Wild Foraged Tea w/ Marc Williams

Ethnobiologist Marc Williams has studied the people, plant, mushroom and microbe interconnection intensively while learning to employ botanicals and other life forms for food, medicine, and beauty in a regenerative manner. His training includes a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies concentrating in Sustainable Agriculture with a minor in Business from Warren Wilson College and a Master’s degree in Appalachian Studies concentrating in Sustainable Development with a minor in Geography and Planning from Appalachian State University. He has spent over two decades working at a multitude of restaurants and various farms and has traveled throughout 30 countries in Central/North/South America and Europe as well as all 50 states of the USA. Marc has visited over 200 botanical gardens and research institutions during this process while taking tens of thousands of pictures of representative plants and other entities. He has taught hundreds of classes to thousands of students about the marvelous world of people and their interface with other organisms while working with over 100 organizations and particularly as a Board of Directors member of United Plant Savers, Plants and Healers International, and online at the website www.botanyeveryday.com. Marc’s greatest hope is that this effort may help improve our current challenging global ecological situation.

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