Meet Julia
Julia Hollowell
Flower Essence Practitioner & Astrologer
My journey with plants, planets, and connecting with Nature came about in a surprising way…
As a kid, I would climb a tree…and then need rescuing. I’d get a houseplant to take care of…and kill it within a week. Regardless of my strong desire to be close with Nature, I was much more the kid who’d get lost in a book for days on end, who loved doing homework, and escaped the pressures of the world by practicing piano.
In college, I was required to take a science class to complete my music major. I opted to take the biology class, “Plants and People” because I heard it was easy. The class was based around Michael Pollen’s fantastic book, “The Botany of Desire”. To my surprise (shout out to liberal arts degrees), this book and class ended up being the most formative of my college career. In this class, I first encountered the beautifully intertwined history of humans and plants. I caught a glimpse of a world where I was connected to Nature every time I ate a meal, put on clothes, or enjoyed the flowers in my garden. I didn’t need a “green thumb” or be a sporty outdoors person to connect to the natural world. I was already a part of it!
Post-college, I found myself enrolled full-time in a two-year course of study for herbal medicine. I knew nothing about plant medicine other than you could drink cranberry juice for urinary tract infections. Despite the lack of previous knowledge, I eagerly learned everything I could. I felt the powerful pull to understand the language of Nature, and how humans have always sought to tap into this knowledge through food, medicine, and even….magic.
My studies in herbal medicine have led to a lifelong pursuit of understanding plants, not just as a whole, but individual species - how they function in their ecosystem, how they impact the human body, and how they have shaped and influenced our mythology, folklore, and spirituality.
As a trained flower essence practitioner and astrologer, I have witnessed first-hand the positive impact connecting to Nature through analogy and story can have on us humans. From an ancient oak on a windswept prairie savannah to a scraggly dandelion fighting through a concrete parking lot, plants have a lot to teach us about surviving and thriving.