English Experiences | Tomnah’a Market Garden
Today we’re going to give you a flavour of our Meet the Makers English immersion experiences at Blue Noun Language Hub.
To do this, we’ll introduce you to our friends at Tomnah’a’s Market Garden.
Over the last few months, our English language Hub has been delighted to help distribute Tomnah’a’s naturally grown veg boxes in our space.
It’s been a strange and awful year, and we were happy to have our beautiful learning space being used for something useful, like getting fresh, naturally grown produce to our local community.
As a thank you for our help, Tomnah’a invited us for a seasonal wreath-making workshop at the gorgeously rustic Wedding ‘Barn’ at Comrie Croft.
This will be the sort of tactile English immersion experience we will share with English learners, once we can safely open up again!
Read on for a full description of this immersion English experience.
There’s a practice question for English learners at the end too!
Meet the Makers | Tomnah’a Market Garden
Fresh flower season ends with the first frost (which came quite early this year).
The remaining field of flowers are quickly picked and dried. They are then used in the autumn wreaths that Tomnah’a sell from various locations.
This year, Tomnaha are also offering wreath making workshops.
English Experiences | Autumn Wreath Making Workshop
Tomnah’a’s autumn wreaths are constructed with either an entwined ring of coloured willow sticks or thin birch branches. (Both are sourced from their farm).
The workshop began with a demonstration of how to make both types of base, then we were invited to help ourselves to the generous selection of branches, preserved flowers and foliage to weave or glue into our design.
Are You a Designer, or ‘Just Go for It’?
I say design as we were advised to plan a little in advance. However, the experience was completely outside anything I’ve made before.
A few sneaky glances at Lolie showed her racing away, deftly twisting different coloured willow sticks like a pro.
The Sensory Pleasure of Flowers
Wreath making was like holding autumn in my hand. It was an honour to treasure those yellowed beech branches and shape them into something lasting. Searching the full tables to find the particular flowers, fir cones and leaves my wreath ‘needed’ was to grow in admiration for every splendid detail of nature.
About the Results
Finally, I ended up adding a fair few bits and pieces: in particular fir cones, poppy heads, sycamore leaves, dried flowers and beautiful, silver honesty seed pods.
I’m still very proud of my effort, but it is only special because of its spectacular contents. What you get with Tomnah’a wreaths are a much more artfully presented circle of wonder.
Hear from Lolie – (You’ll Meet her on Your Language Holiday)
“On Monday morning I woke up to a beautiful autumnal day. Autumn in Scotland is one of my favorite times of the year. The pallet of colours that are painted in the leaves across the horizon is Mother Nature’s way of welcoming in winter and saying adjure until the first colours of spring appear.
We took the bus from Crieff high street through to Comrie Croft for a morning of wreath making. When we entered the barn we were welcomed with the colours of summer captured in the dried flowers, lichen and willow sticks that we would be using to make our wreaths”.
Take Our Autumn Adventure
“After months of sheltering and lockdown it was just a joy to be able to share creative time and space again with people who shared a love for nature and enjoyed the simple pleasure of making something with your hands. For three hours the worries of the world were kept at bay and I realised how much I missed the peace and tranquility that comes with making something.I now have a beautiful wreath hanging on my wall, made with the inspiration of friends and the colors of nature from Tomnah’s Market Garden. My wreath will always remind me of this wonderful autumnal day and that in worrisome times we can always create joy with nature and friendship as our inspiration”.
English Experiences | Autumn Wreath Making
During the Autumn Wreath Workshop, Tomnah’a’s Cristy and Judith were also working on producing wreaths to sell.
English Experiences for Immersion Language Learning
In addition, our Meet the Makers experiences are unique in having genuine language exchanges with makers and producers across Perthshire.
Blue Noun English Language Challenge
We hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of a Blue Noun Meet the Makers immersion English Workshop.
We cover a broad range of topics in our language school blogs – some a lighthearted look at Scotland, others an in-depth look at art and culture. There’s something for everyone.
If you like all things natural, you might want to read our English tips blog:
English Tips | Essential Oils for Learning a Foreign Language
Your Blue Noun English Language Challenge is:
Use the comment section below to tell us about: a superb workshop
What did you learn? What made it so great?
Write as much as you like, and if you would like us to check & correct your English, write CP (correct please) at the end.
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