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Session One: Introduction to Spiritual Ecology & Attuned Land Tending
Date: October 4th · 10am–1pm
We begin by grounding in the roots of spiritual ecology: the practice of seeing land, spirit, and psyche as one continuous field. Led by Eve Gaines, the founder of Rituel and drawing from her eighteen years of stewardship Rituel Nature Refuge, apprenticeship with Chumash medicine woman Cecilia Garcia, and ongoing studies in ecopsychology and ecological design. She’ll share the ways tending has become a living dialogue—a relationship rather than a task.
The Refuge itself has entered its own initiation through fire. Together we’ll walk and witness how native plants regenerate, how landscapes remember, and how fire reshapes the arc of renewal. This session will weave teaching, story, and embodied practice:
Reciprocity in tending — shifting from extraction toward mutual care.
Seasonal and elemental intelligence — listening for guidance in daily and ceremonial rhythms.
Native plant kinship — seed saving, honoring lineages, and the quiet work of restoration.
Tending as ritual — how stewardship itself becomes ceremony.
Ecological grief as teacher — acknowledging loss while practicing renewal.
You will leave not only with skills and insights, but with a felt sense of belonging to the land beneath your feet. This is the foundation for all that follows in the immersion: the practice of reverent relationships, rooted in presence, humility, and trust in the cycles of life.
Session Two: Food Forests, Native Plants & Regenerative Belonging
Date: November 1st · 9am–3pm (includes lunch)
This daylong workshop brings us into the living intelligence of food forests and the practices that merge ecological restoration with food production. Together, we’ll replant and rejuvenate the gardens at Rituel Nature Refuge following the fire, exploring what it means to become “people of place” through reciprocal care.
The session will guide participants through:
Food forest design principles that nourish both people and ecosystems
Polyculture planting patterns that mirror nature’s abundance
Integrating California native plants into edible landscapes
The edible and medicinal gifts of each plant we place in the soil
Collective tending as a practice of belonging
We’ll pause for a shared meal, then return to hands-on planting, learning directly from soil, seeds, and roots.
This session is led by Abudu Nenwero—forest gardener, natural builder, poet, and educator. After studying fine arts at Pratt Institute, Abudu deepened into ceremonial connection with food and the elements at Standing Rock, and went on to study Traditional Ecological Knowledge, agroecology, permaculture design, and natural building with Indigenous teachers, Quail Springs, and Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. He has created projects such as Akwaaba Urban Food Forest Garden in Altadena, inspired the Anabala Agroforestry Project in Northern Ghana, and now tends community land at Mama Tree Orchard in Ojai. His work embodies food forests as a practice of resilience, reciprocity, and liberation.
Session Three: Biodynamic Lunar Rhythms & the Intelligence of Timing
Date: December 6th · 10am–1pm
The rhythms of the moon and planets shape the vitality of the land we tend. In this session, we will explore how to align our planting, pruning, and harvesting with celestial cycles—bringing our gardens and inner lives into deeper synchronicity with the cosmos. Through teaching and practice, we’ll attune to:
Lunar cycles in practice — how waxing and waning phases influence plant growth and vitality.
Elemental correspondences — the relationship between earth, water, air, and fire signs in biodynamic gardening.
Practical timing tools — using lunar calendars to guide garden care with ease and precision.
Ritual in rhythm — approaching seasonal and lunar cycles as a form of ceremony and reciprocity.
This session will offer both practical applications for your home garden and a more intimate sense of connection with cosmic time as an ally in regenerative tending.
Guiding this workshop is Loretta Allison—garden designer, herbalist, nursery founder, and longtime practitioner of biodynamic land care. Loretta has studied horticulture at UCLA, earned a Permaculture Design Certificate and a Certificate in Herbalism with Marysia Miernowska, and co-created Fig Earth Supply Nursery in Highland Park, where she helped nurture an emerging urban ecological consciousness. She is also the founder of Spade and Seeds, a line of beyond-organic edible and medicinal plant starts that circulated through Los Angeles farmers’ markets. Drawing on decades of hands-on practice, Loretta brings warmth, creativity, and depth to her teaching, helping communities reconnect with plants, food, and the wisdom of lunar rhythms.
Session Four: Designing Regenerative Spaces — Inner, Domestic, and Communal
Date: January 10th · 10am–1pm
The spaces we inhabit shape the way we live. Gardens, homes, and even the inner landscapes of our psyche carry the imprint of how we see ourselves in relation to the living world. When we design and tend these spaces with reverence, they become more than functional—they become vessels of renewal, sites of belonging, and places where reciprocity is practiced daily.
In this session, we will explore design as a regenerative practice, guided by the understanding that every layer of space—from the soil beneath our feet to the rooms where we rest, to the wider landscapes we share—is alive and responsive. To tend these spaces is to tend ourselves. To align them with natural rhythms is to invite balance and resilience into our lives.
This immersion invites you into the artistry of creating regenerative spaces—spaces that nourish the body, restore the spirit, and weave us back into the cycles of the earth. Through teaching, practice, and guided visioning, we’ll explore how tending becomes a way of being, and how the choices we make in our gardens, homes, and communities ripple outward into the wider web of life.
Together we’ll explore:
The Ecological Self — how designing spaces becomes a mirror of the inner landscape, weaving psyche and place into harmony.
Sanctuary Design — shaping homes and thresholds as living sanctuaries, attuned to rhythm, ritual, and the cycles of nature.
Gardens of Reciprocity — crafting food, medicine, and pollinator gardens that root us in belonging and restore relationship with the land.
Pattern Literacy — drawing from the forms and rhythms of the natural world to guide regenerative space-making.
Designing for Continuity — planting with legacy in mind, so the spaces we create carry nourishment across generations.
You’ll leave with a regenerative design framework that bridges the inner and outer—practical tools for shaping spaces that nourish, heal, and inspire, alongside embodied practices to sustain your connection over time.
This final session is both a culmination and a powerful standalone immersion, offering tools that are at once practical and transformative. Led by Eve Gaines and grounded in her studies of ecological design, organic architecture, ecopsychology, traditional apprenticeships and nearly two decades as steward of Rituel Nature Refuge, this offering carries both lived practice and deep lineage of learning.
A Season of Generosity
This season has reminded us just how generous and interconnected our community truly is. Many of you have reached out with open hearts, asking how you can support Rituel as we rebuild, reimagine, and grow.
In response, we’ve opened a Benefactor Tier. If it’s within your means, this is a way to contribute directly to the sustainment of Rituel—supporting the land, the spaces we tend, and the offerings we’re devoted to sharing. Your generosity helps us continue this work in integrity and expansion. Please reach out to learn more.
In the same spirit, we’re also holding 1–2 scholarship spaces for each of our offerings. We believe deeply in access, and these spaces are available to those who feel called to the work but may need financial support to participate.
Whether you are giving, receiving, or somewhere in between—thank you for being part of this living, evolving community.
