The 5 Seasons Garden

Spring

Rise

Summer

Create

Late Summer

Nourish

Autumn

Gather

Winter

Rest

A Learning Landscape in the Hudson Valley

Growing Food and Medicine, Practicing Permaculture and Living Regeneratively

The mission of the 5 Seasons Garden is to reveal life’s regenerative cycles, our place within them, and how our participation nourishes the community of life. Each seasonal garden brings together nutritious foods and medicinal plants selected to support health and well-being in that season. Many plants naturally flower or bear fruit at that time.
We also explore deeper seasonal correspondences drawn from Classical Chinese Medicine and Indigenous knowledge traditions. A plant’s color, taste, growth pattern, ecological niche, and medicinal actions offer ways to understand its relationship to seasonal health. The 5 Seasons Garden is a place to witness these and many other connections at work. Through our educational programs, we continue the oral tradition of teaching care for the health of the land, our bodies, our relationships, and our local economies.

Educational Programs

Guided tours

Walk through the Garden with us and explore how plants contribute to the life of the season and the health of the living world. We’ll taste plants, learn how their roles in ecosystems mirror their roles in our bodily health, and explore the thinking behind their placement in the Garden. Bring your curiosity: questions about horticulture, medicinal uses, ecological relationships, and garden design are all welcome.

Apothecary; Seasonal herbal preparations

Making remedies by hand is a healing art that connects us to ancestral ways of honoring the land and the medicine it offers. Spend an afternoon learning how the season’s plants support everyday health and well-being. We’ll explore their traditional uses and practical applications as we prepare remedies to begin building your home apothecary.

Seasonal Arts; observation and making in the Garden

Creative work offers an intuitive, sensory way to learn about plants and build our relationship with them. By noticing their colors, forms, textures, and patterns, and observing how they grow and relate to the life around them, we deepen our ecological literacy and affection for the living world. Experiences may include watercolor, nature journaling, seasonal ornaments, and medicinal crafts. Bring your ideas—let’s create together!

Land Stewardship, Permaculture and Plantcare

Join us for shared work and learning in the garden. We’ll exchange skills and knowledge as we tend the soil, care for plants, and work with water and seasonal growth. Through hands-on practice and observation, we’ll explore how our care supports the relationships that make healthy, resilient landscapes. Bring your experience, questions, and willingness to learn from the land and one another.

Seasonal Gatherings

Create space between seasons to pause, reflect, and share with others. Together, we’ll consider what has emerged from the closing season and what we wish to carry into the next. Around the table, we’ll find nourishment in seasonal foods, conversation, and being received by a like-minded, like-hearted community. Through sharing a meal and reflecting together, we digest our experiences and prepare to enter the season ahead.

Anne Wiesen and John Seitz began building The Five Seasons Garden 3 years ago with significant assistance from a talented group of garden builders, horticulturalists, landscape designers, herbalists and plant lovers. These include Langston Clark, E. Paul DiMartino, Ora Erlich, Adam Garcia, Sophia Gibaldi, Dillon Gray, Jennifer Hamp, Jake Kiel, Yael Krevsky, Chris Radicle, Ashley Santoro, Xuan Seitz, Raha Behnam Shabahang, Daniel Torres and Whitt Van Tassell.