Botanical Art and Crafts using plant material
Workshops
The Ellen Hutchins Festival each August in the inner Bantry Bay area has a range of workshops and demonstrations covering botanical art and various crafts using plant materials. This year’s Festival runs from Saturday 15th to Sunday 23rd August 2026, with workshops on almost all days of the Festival.
The workshops provide a rich mix of ways of getting closer to nature – plants in particular – and of learning more about them and their natural environment.
The workshop programme is designed for adults and most listings give an indication of age for young people to attend, either alone or with an accompanying adult. All the workshops have fees and places need to be booked in advance.
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Workshops in the 2026 Festival
A short listing of the arts and crafts workshops available, full information to follow shortly:
Learning about seaweeds, pressing them and writing poetry about them with Frances Gallagher and Annette Skade, Saturday 15th August, 4pm to 6pm, €35, booking required, The WorkShop Bantry.
Green sketching – plants in a woodland garden setting with Anne Harrington Rees, with refreshments afterwards, Sunday 16th August, 11am to 1pm, €45, booking required, Heron Gallery, Ahakista.
Pressing seaweeds with Farraige, Sunday 16th August, 3pm to 4:30pm, €70, booking required, Heron Gallery, Ahakista.
Papermaking from wild plant materials with Sonia Caldwell, Monday 17th August, 11am to 1pm, €55, booking required, at Kilcoe Studios, Ballydehob.
Oak Gall Ink Making with Sonia Caldwell, Monday 17th August, 3pm to 5pm, €45, booking required, at Kilcoe Studios, Ballydehob.
Nature art with paints, candle wax, salt, biodegradable wrap, leaf impressions and metal leaf with Sue van Coppenhagen, Tuesday 18th August, 10am to 4pm, €60 , booking required, in Bantry House Tearooms.
Workshop with Samuel Arnold Keane, Tuesday 18th, 3pm to 5pm, Bantry, more information coming soon.
Botanical Art two day workshop (intermediate level) with Shevaun Doherty, Thursday 20th & Friday 21st August, 10am to 4pm, €130 booking required, in Bantry House Tearooms.
Casadh an tSugan – Rope Making demonstration with Sonia Caldwell, Thursday 20th August, 5pm to 6:30pm, free, booking required, at Kilcoe Studios, Ballydehob.
Botanical Art demonstration with Shevaun Doherty, Saturday 22nd August, 2pm to 4pm, free, drop in or stay.
Botanical art for beginners: workshop with Shevaun Doherty, Sunday 23rd August, 10am to 1pm, €40, booking required, at Future Forests, Kealkill.
Weaving willow rattles with Ciara Strange – Sunday 23rd August, 2pm and 3pm starts, 45 minute workshops, cost €15, booking required, at Future Forests, Kealkill.
Previous years
Festival 2025 and 2024 both contained a wonderfully wide range of workshops in botanical art and crafts using plant materials. A day by day review of the workshops is available on the Ellen Hutchins 200 facebook page HERE. Not surprisingly, given the focus of the Festivals, all the workshops had a link to botany/ plants and many had a heritage slant as well. They mostly combined elements of cultural heritage with natural heritage.
WORKSHOPS 2025
· Cyanotypes ( blue prints) from plants and framing them with Kathy Kirwan
· kelp ink making with Samuel Arnold Keane
· weaving willow rattles with Ciara Strange
· pressing seaweeds with Farraige
· Learning about seaweeds, pressing them and writing poetry about them with Frances Gallagher and Annette Skade
· Green sketching – plants in a woodland garden setting with Anne Harrington Rees
· botanical art in watercolours with Shevaun Doherty
· nature art with paints, candle wax, salt, biodegradable wrap, leaf impressions and metal leaf with Sue van Coppenhagen.
WORKSHOPS 2024
· making natural dyes from plants with Kathy Kirwan
· kelp ink making with Samuel Arnold Keane
· weaving willow flowers with Ciara Strange
· pressing seaweeds with Farraige or Frances Gallagher
· sketching plants in a woodland setting with Anne Harrington Rees
· printing from life by the shore with Clare Henderson
· botanical art in watercolours with Shevaun Doherty
· nature art with paints, candle wax, salt, biodegradable wrap, leaf impressions and metal leaf with Sue van Coppenhagen.
Festival 2023
Shevaun Doherty ran a two day botanical art workshop – Hedgerows Wild and Beautiful – at Bantry House tearooms and a beginners’ half day workshop at Future Forests.
Frances Gallagher ran a seaweed spreading /specimen making workshop on Whiddy Island.
Other arts and crafts workshops were run in conjunction with Two Green Shoots in the Garden of Re-Imagination in Glengarriff – Botanical Collage with Pacie Grews and Macramé from Marine Waste with Ida Mitrani – and Sonia Caldwell of Kilcoe Studies in Ballydehob gave a talk with a hands-on element on Our Plant Fibres and their use in craft in the past and today.
Festival 2022
The Festival in 2022 had workshops on botanical art and ones led by artists engaging with plants and seaweeds in a wonderful range of ways.
Award-winning Irish botanical artist, Shevaun Doherty, ran a beginners half day workshop.
West Cork artist, Sonia Caldwell, ran a half day workshop on Our Plants and Our Heritage: Learning Outdoors about plants and weaving with rushes.
Unfortunately, artist Sybille Neumeyer was unable to attend the Festival but we hope to rearrange another year.
Frances Gallagher ran a workshop on making seaweed specimens and using them artistically.
Botanical Art Half Day Workshop (beginner level)
Future Forests, Kealkil
Award-winning botanical artist, Shevaun Doherty, ran a half-day workshop in the wonderful setting of Future Forests. Focussing on some simple flowers, Shevaun tutored participants in how to produce watercolour illustrations they could be proud of.
Our Plants and Our Heritage
Learning outdoors about plants and weaving with rushes – suitable for Adults and over 14 years. Facilitator: Sonia Caldwell { Kilcoe Studios }
Mealagh Valley Community Centre and surrounds
This was a workshop of two parts which explored the outdoors and also did creative hands-on craftwork.
First the group explored this beautiful area and throughout the walk learnt to identify the different plants on the way and learnt about their use in the past for various purposes including craft and food.
In the second part the group stopped for a tea and coffee break with home made and foraged snacks before doing the creative work.
The focus was on the use of field rushes which due to their abundance were used for a wide variety of things and participants did a weaving with them that could be used as a table mat. The group also looked at other examples of basketmaking and weaving.
See http://www.kilcoestudios.com for more information about Sonia’s work
Seaweed Specimens as Art
Workshop
Community Hall, Whiddy Island
Frances Gallagher’s workshop was on making seaweed specimens, using them artistically including in collage pictures, and how to frame and look after them. As well as being a practical workshop making specimens, Frances brought a selection of specimens and work that she had made and talked through issues and solutions.
Voices of Water
Workshop
THIS WORKSHOP WAS CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
Seaweed Seats and Snacks Workshop
by Two Green Shoots
Over a relaxing afternoon, participants could craft their own upcycled seat while enjoying a variety of freshly made seaweed themed snacks & drinks! Participants learnt how to transform ghost fishing nets & line brought back from sea into a really comfortable all-weather seat for their garden decorated in a stylised seaweed pattern of their choosing.
A selection of sweet & savory snacks infused with delicious seaweeds sustainably foraged from around the Beara Peninsula were served.
Held at the Garden of Re-Imagination, Glengarriff, West Cork, P75AW26
The Ellen Hutchins Festival in August 2021 included two online workshops:
Nature art workshop session with Sue van Coppenhagen Painting Wildflowers in Watercolour, on Zoom
A three hour online workshop with watercolour artist, Sue van Coppenhagen. Sue demonstrated a number of techniques to paint your own wildflower meadow. You could either paint along, or simply watch, and attempt your painting later in your own time.
Following the online workshop, participants were sent the link to the Zoom recording of the session, and as a bonus, exclusive access to YouTube videos where Sue recorded in real time the painting of the painting shown here and a second one.
Botanical art workshop with Shevaun Doherty. 5 hour Hedgerow Wild & Beautiful flower painting course via Zoom. 10am to 4pm (with an hour for lunch).
An online watercolour workshop with award-winning botanical artist Shevaun Doherty painting the colours and shapes of late summer hedgerows.
Summer hedgerows are full of wild beauty, a rich palette of flowers, leaves and summer fruit. This workshop looked at different types of flowers, such as Fuchsia, Montbretia, Honeysuckle and Bramble, and explored the approaches to drawing and painting them.
The workshop was fun and informal, full of practical tips and advice, and suitable for beginners or artists who wished to improve their painting skills.
Website: www.shevaundoherty.com
From 2019
The Festival has always included classes and free demonstrations by its ‘resident’ award-winning botanical artist, Shevaun Doherty. In 2019, another Irish watercolour artist, Sue van Coppenhagen, also ran a class and a demonstration in the Festival.
2019: Botanical art class for beginners
New to watercolour and love plants? This fun and friendly 3 hour class showed how to capture the colours, shapes and textures of the natural world. Materials included. No experience necessary. Participants could take their first steps into botanical art with this introductory class, in the very special setting of the wonderful wooden building at Future Forests. Shevaun’s tuition is excellent and her classes are always popular.
2019 Two-day Botanical Art Workshop: Colours of Summer Flowers
Learn the watercolour techniques needed to paint the vibrant Colours of Summer Flowers in this workshop at Bantry House with Shevaun Doherty. Learn how to match petal colours accurately, colour mixing and how to use layers of paint to capture delicate nuances of light and shadow. Bantry House is the perfect place to spend two days under Shevaun’s guidance.
2019 One-day Workshop: Atmospheric Nature Watercolours
With renowned watercolour artist, Sue van Coppenhagen, painting flowers and leaves in watercolour, with atmospheric background effects. Paints and paper supplied. Suitable for beginners as well as more experienced painters, Sue shows you watercolour techniques for creating paintings of flowers that look as if they are growing in the wild, and/or leaves that look as if they’re being tumbled by the wind. Textural techniques include working with masking fluid, clingfilm, salt, and metal leaf.
2019 Botanical Art Demonstrations
Shevaun Doherty demonstrated her exquisite art skills live and talked about botanical art.
Shevaun won Best in Show at Bloom in 2018 with a watercolour on vellum of a lichen. She paints every day, and exhibits internationally. This was an opportunity to drop in and see her at work, chatting about it and sharing tips and advice.
2019 Nature Art Demonstration
A chance to get up close, watch and talk with artist Sue van Coppenhagen as she paints one of her beautiful nature art pictures, inspired by the wonderful County Cork.
Sue’s delicate yet vibrant watercolours reflect a very immediate and enthusiastic response to her surroundings, and are sought after by collectors both in Ireland and further afield.
