Floral Ark

A Personal Journey

Hello, I'm Amanda. Floral Ark is my living response to a world in need of slowing down, remembering, and reconnecting.

I didn't choose this path in the usual way.

About fifteen years ago, I had a prophetic dream - a small Neolithic girl holding a bowl of flower heads. Soon after, in Glastonbury at the Goddess House, I journeyed to Ceridwen's cauldron with Priestess Bee. She told me the girl was me, and that I would work with plants - perhaps as a herbalist, perhaps with flower remedies. It was the first time I felt truly called. Ceridwen has walked beside me ever since.

A few years after the dream, I co-founded and ran an award-winning community interest company in Cambridgeshire, supporting over a thousand women and children through creative education. I loved the work - but I was burning out. With the weight of the inherent social injustice in our current system, and the pressure to hold everything together, my body began to speak through chronic migraines and heart palpitations.

In 2018, I made the decision to live differently. I moved to Bronllys in Wales, with the quiet dream of building something in partnership with the land.

Tamil Nadu

While studying for my MA in Ecology and Spirituality, I travelled to Tamil Nadu on a healing pilgrimage. Those ten days changed my life. I was hospitalised in India and flown home for emergency spinal surgery after developing Cauda Equina Syndrome. I could have been paralysed. Instead, I was given another chance. My healing did not come from one place alone. It came from the garden. From growing herbs and listening to my body. From chanting daily in gratitude. From friends. From trees and fungi. From drumming. From walking slowly back into relationship with the living world. Floral Ark is the result of that return.

Trees, Plants and Animals

I am an animist at heart. I stand for the trees, the plants and the animals. I believe we are interconnected, and that ancient, land-based ways of knowing must be remembered here, on our own soil. I care deeply about sisterhood, family and community. I do not resonate with the commercialisation of spirituality. Integrity, for me, means doing what I say I will do - and sourcing, teaching and tending with care.

My training weaves together practical and mystical strands: accredited herbal studies, Wild Welsh Herbalism, Reiki lineage through the UK Reiki Federation, drum-making apprenticeship, and ongoing academic research. But more than qualifications, what I bring is lived experience - of burnout, chronic pain, trauma, motherhood, and rebuilding from the ground up.

Gentle Nurturing

I was a single mother of three for many years. I live with ADHD, CPTSD and a fused spine. I know what it is to feel stretched thin. I also know the steady power of rhythm, soil and devotion. Women often tell me they feel deeply held here. That I create sacred space with clarity and warmth. That they leave not only with a drum or remedy, but with something restored inside themselves. Floral Ark is not about grand empowerment. It is about gentle confidence. Safety. Being seen. Being nurtured - whether one-to-one or among sisters.

This is earthy work.

This is devotional work.

This is steady, mountain-rooted work.

And if you feel the call to return - to plants, to rhythm, to the woman who knows - I would be honoured to walk beside you.

Reach Out - I'm Here For You

A Sanctuary

Floral Ark is known as a sanctuary - a place where land-based work is performed with restraint, skill, and care.

Mission

To hold land, craft, and ceremonial space in ways that allow people to return quietly to body, rhythm, and belonging. Our guiding principles are:

• Seasonal and land-led work.

• Clear energetic and practical boundaries.

• Small numbers and high integrity.

• Financial sufficiency without burnout.

Values

• Respect for land capacity, seasonal rhythms, and human health.

• Reciprocity with the natural environment.

• Retain and pass on land-based skills and knowledge.

A Note on Privilege & Gratitude

I want to acknowledge that the ability to live and work in this way is not something I take for granted.

To tend land, to hold retreats, to devote time to plants and ceremony - these are privileges. I am deeply aware that many people who long for this connection do not always have access to land, time or resources in the same way. Floral Ark exists because of opportunities I have been given, risks I have been able to take, and support I have received along the way. I hold that with humility.

I am grateful every single day for this acre of soil, for the Black Mountains that shelter us, for the community that gathers here, and for the chance to do work that feels aligned with my values. I do not believe this land belongs to me in any ultimate sense. I see myself as a steward, not an owner.

My intention is to use this privilege responsibly — to share knowledge generously, to source ethically, to tread lightly, and to make this space as welcoming and accessible as I can.

This work is a gift.

And I treat it as one.

A Note About My Teachers

I have been extraordinarily fortunate to work with some amazing teachers in the past few years, and it is important to me to recognise the lineage of my skills. These two women, in particular, have reawakened the deep, ancestral knowledge held in my bones and have enabled me to pass this ancient knowing onto others. I hold them in deep gratitude.

• Salena Walker taught me community herbalism, and it was in her course that I first realised that it was my path to listen to other-than-human world, especially to the plant beings.

  To find out more, see www.salenawalker.earth

• Rachael Crow taught me how to hold the sacred space of drum birthing. As her apprentice, I learnt the art of hide and hoop drums and remembered that it is women's ancient birthright to drum and connect to the natural world.

  To find out more, see www.rachaelcrow.co.uk