Chris Holland has spent over three decades helping people - young and old - find their way back to the natural world. In this warmly personal conversation, Robin and Chris reflect on the threads that have woven their lives together: a shared love of plants, the legacy of plant mentor Frank Cook, and the quiet revolution taking place in nature connection education.

Chris is the author of I Love My World, widely regarded as the unofficial Forest School manual, and the founder of Natural Musicians. A practice that democratises music-making in wild places, inviting children and families to listen deeply and celebrate landscape through sound.

His work sits at the intersection of nature pedagogy, John Young's Eight Shields framework, and a profound belief that connection to the other-than-human world is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

They explore how children learn differently when handed a stick and a stone instead of a worksheet, why making music in a stone circle might change the listener more than the landscape, and what it means to truly stay — with a plant, with discomfort, with belonging.

For educators, parents, and anyone who has ever felt the pull of a hedgerow, this episode is a quiet reminder that the wild is always closer than we think.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

• Robin Harford

Transcripts

• This episode

Connect with Chris Holland

Website | Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

Books

• I Love My World
• Plant Of The Week
• Sharing Nature With Children
• The Heat Will Kill You First

Courses

• Natural Musicians

People, Places and Things Mentioned On The Show

• Buzzard Yurt
• Kingfisher Yurt
• City of Bath Roman Baths
• Fluxus Art Movement
• Frank Cook
• New Age Fraud
• Pam Horton
• Pauline Oliveros
• Sandor Katz
• Schumacher College
• Trill On The Hill

Related Resources

• 30 Days of Domei
• Domei Newsletter

Robin Harford meets storyteller Clare Viner beneath a flowering hawthorn tree in Devon to explore the living tradition of oral storytelling.

Clare shares how stories belong to everyone - not fixed texts handed down by celibate monks, but breathing, evolving things shaped by the teller's felt sense and relationship with land.

They discuss how patriarchy silenced women's stories, how rivers and plants carry their own narratives, and why giving yourself permission to tell an imperfect story is a radical act.

The episode closes with Clare's spellbinding retelling of Merlin and the Lady Nimue - a love story rooted in hawthorn, heart medicine, and the dreaming earth.

About Clare Viner

Clare Viner has been a storyteller for 26 years.

Her roots are personal. As a child, her grandfather wove fairy tales for her. That inheritance stuck, and eventually became a vocation.

She has told to audiences of every age and disposition: toddlers, teenagers, the elderly, festival goers. Clare has performed in the children’s tent at WOMAD for the last 15 years. She works without books or props, and no two tellings of a story are ever the same.

Her book, The Emerald Dragon and Other Magical Tales of the Blackdown and Quantock Hills, reimagines the folklore of two beloved British landscapes from the perspective of someone who trusts and loves the earth. It was funded by a DEFRA grant.

She was writer in residence for Connecting the Culm, a river conservation project that culminated in a four-day River Story Pilgrimage, walking and camping along the water's edge.

She runs workshops exploring the folklore of British wild animals and trees, including Spirit of Hare, Spirit of Deer, and others. Having once been terrified herself, she takes particular pleasure in guiding the terrified through the process of finding their own storytelling voice.

She takes old stories and dreams them new, again and again.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

- Robin Harford

Transcript

• This episode

Connect with Clare Viner, Storyteller

Website | Email | Facebook | Instagram

Things Mentioned On The Show

• A Women's Book of Herbs by Elisabeth Brooke
• Connecting The Culm
• Stories of the Culm

Related Resources

• Hawthorn T-Shirt

Show Notes: Understanding Domei

This episode explores Domei, a contemplative practice designed to bridge the gap between humans and the living world through sensory engagement and "deep listening."

Domei Resources

• The official Domei website
• 30 Days of Domei: A Month of Botanical Attention

Key Takeaways

• The Origin of Domei: A neologism blending the Gaelic roots Domhain (deep) and Éist (listen).
• Beyond the Ears: Listening is defined as a whole-body experience—feeling into the environment rather than just hearing sound.
• A Shift in Perspective: The practice moves the participant from seeing nature as "scenery" to recognizing plants as "neighbors" and fellow beings.
• De-emphasizing Analysis: Domei encourages "wordless knowing," where the goal is to be with a plant without the need to identify, categorize, or extract information from it.

The Practice: How to Engage

The core of the practice is rooted in voluntary, unhurried attention.

1. Find a Plant: Locate a living thing, even just beyond your doorstep.
2. Quiet the Mind: Move away from analytical thinking and botanical classification.
3. Physical Awareness: Notice how the presence of the plant affects your own body—your breathing, your balance, and the weight of your feet on the ground.
4. Sit in Companionship: Spend as little as five minutes simply being present with the organism.

Philosophical Foundations

Domei draws from centuries of Western contemplative traditions. It suggests that humans possess an internal "sensory map" and guidance system that is revealed once they slow down enough to receive natural signals. Ultimately, it is a path toward realizing a lack of separation from the earth.