Nature Journalling Workshop

Learn how to draw and write for identification or just for pleasure from the natural world around the Sculpture gardens with botanical artist and award winning illustrator Sandra Morris.
 

Nature journaling, and indeed botanical art in all forms is experiencing a renaissance. Becoming hugely popular overseas it is now growing in popularity here in Aotearoa. Nature journalling promotes an awareness of the natural world around us, a close-up of a universe that is often unseen in the bustle of modern life.
 

Therein lies the magic; to engage in nature journaling is to engage in mindfulness. To slow down and discover the intricacies of plant and creature, the symbiotic nature of decay and growth, the relationships and connections that underpin the natural world and all it contains.
 

No previous artistic skills are necessary, just a desire to learn to look and record in the best way suited to each individual, be it in the form of a sketch, a detailed drawing, a diagram, a graph, and /or using words and numbers, poems, haiku, lists, prose, descriptions etc. By consistently journaling, we learn more about the natural world, through observation and enquiry. Once we have really looked at a tree and its parts and drawn it and written about it, it becomes more than just the tree we walk by on our way to school or work. It becomes part of our memory and knowledge bank. We have formed a real connection with it.
 

Bring along your journal and preferred drawing tools, watercolour pans or colour pencils (If you have them) magnifying glass, small ruler and a folding stool or something to sit on.
 

Venue:  Sculpture park, Waitakaruru Arboretum,
             207 Scotsman Valley Rd, Tauwhare, Hamilton

Date: Sunday 12 April 2026

Time: TBC
Cost: TBC
Contact:  https://www.sculpturepark.co.nz/workshops​