Tending Residency

 

Live close to nature, experience the healing found in this connection, while learning to grow food and tend land in a nature-attuned way. Our tending residence program is an opportunity to live in, learn from and tend this healing Garden, building skills in growing food and tending land in a regenerative, ecological way.

Natura is located in the beautiful Commonweal Garden in Bolinas, California, on unceded Coast Miwok land, now known as Point Reyes National Seashore. It has been lovingly tended by many hands over the years, and is now a nature-placed center for healing, featuring permacultural design  elements blending with tended niches designed for human-nature communion. The land is a supportive environment for healing, learning, and personal growth, with opportunities to tend soil, plants, and animals (currently chickens), and self. The surrounding wild land is accessible via trails to inspiring vistas, secluded sit spots, and wild beaches. 
 
Landmates:  Residents live in the Garden along with Anna (our resident healer in the garden), her children, and our Garden Manager. We celebrate the presence of children and value intergenerational interactions. We enjoy potluck dinners, opportunity for meaningful conversations, playing music, and having fun. While we enjoy each other’s company, we also have lives that take us out of the garden regularly. Many residents have found that having social community outside of the Garden balances out the potential for feeling isolated.
 
Room & Buildings: The 10x10 room we have for rent is located in a beautiful, natural cob building. It is a duplex- you would be sharing with building with another person, with the rooms separated by a wall. There is a beautiful porch overlooking the garden, from which you can see and hear the ocean. It’s important to note there is no wifi in the buildings that function as private spaces. Residents share a kitchen and living room in "the bunkhouse" (where wifi is available). There are 2 others that share this space, providing opportunity to engage in communal living and shared agreements. On rare occasion, groups that rent the garden will use this kitchen to cook for their program attendees, with permission on a case by case basis. Please note that all residents of the garden currently use port-o-potties in lieu of toilets, and accommodations are rustic and close to nature. We hope to have composting toilets in the near future. You will have access to a beautiful greenhouse bath & shower that is shared between 6 people. There are laundry machines in the bathhouse as well. 
 
Garden: We are here in service of being in a tending relationship with this land, and all that demands of us. We honor each other and the land by leaning into the tending and the joy that is found in it. We each tend the land ten hours a week. We love being able to eat right out of the garden, and we share the seasonal surplus with local food pantries.
 
Educational experience: This is a hands-on learning opportunity. Our Garden Manager, Jacob, is skilled in teaching permaculture and farm/garden elements while tending alongside resident. We strongly encourage residents to participate in core healing programs to ground the experience in healing. Further possibilities to learn about integrative medicine, use of food and plants as medicine, and community medicine are possible with optional participation in programs offered, as well as in ad hoc conversations with director and integrative physician Anna O’Malley.