Sowa Rigpa for Garden & Gardener:
Elemental Gardening Workshop Series
with Joshua Nash
Part One: Summer
Saturday June 20th, 2026
9am - 12pm
I challenge gardeners to befriend every single thing, living and dying in the garden. Every plant is a resource, a lifeforce, a medicine (ethereal form). Every insect and animal–an astral body. We want to harbor life and honor death in the garden. Be an instrument of Nature: learn to workwith–not against–the plants, animals, insects around you. Leave room for wildness wherever possible. This is actually a standard requirement of certified Biodynamic farms. As we have “thought” ourselves out of Nature with our toil of agriculture, we are slightly out of step with the world around us. There will be feast, there will be famine: that is, seasons of abundance, seasons of receiving; and seasons of offering, seasons of giving. Let every outcome be a teaching. Nature delights in Humanity. We are a bridge between creation and imagination when we tune ourselves in. Leave the eight worldly concerns at the garden gate. Above all, listen to the garden: with your ears, your eyes, your tongue, your nose, your hands, your heart.
Sowa Rigpa, the Tibetan “science of healing,” uses traditional medical knowledge of the five elements—space, wind, fire, water, and earth—to promote health through balance. It is rooted largely in the observation of nature through the seasons of the year and of one’s lifespan as these elements change over time. As all things in nature are constituted by these five, this approach to life can reach beyond the scope of merely human and animal wellbeing.
This workshop series in four parts will explore connections from the ancient science of human health to finding balance in the garden or farm. The four parts are organized by pairing each of the four seasons with a particular element. Each session will begin with explanations of theory, bridging Sowa Rigpa ideas to the realms of people and plants. Following that, there will be practical demonstrations of how to create medicines for plants themselves, primarily using resources from the garden itself and the surrounding landscape. Working with techniques from “natural farming” practices from around the world, gardeners will feel more empowered to maintain healthy plants and correct imbalances that arise in the home garden. Everyone will be encouraged to deepen their connection to the web of life.
This program is open to all, but is not a start-to-finish “how to” on gardening. The aim is for participants to gain new perspectives—theoretically and practically—about their relationship to the natural world, both wild and cultivated. Participation is available in person only at Pure Land Farms Topanga.
JOSHUA NASH
Joshua Nash is a gardener growing in the Morongo Basin. Working with natural farming methods, he tends the land to restore animal and insect habitat, care for annual vegetables and culinary herbs, native plants and fruit trees for a farm-to-table location in the desert. He is also the co-manager of the garden and grounds at Pure Land Farms since 2023. Joshua was introduced to cultivating nature through the portal of compost at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC where he helped generate compost for the farm there from 2006-2010. While there he earned a BA in Religious Studies with a concentration in East Asian religions (2010), and is in the 2027 class of practitioners at the Sowa Rigpa Institute.
