About HerbFest

Hi, I’m Cat Green, founder of Everyday Empowered and HerbFest!

I’m a card-carrying herb nerd and I feel so grateful to our green kin, I honestly don’t know how people live without herbs.

HerbFest was born from that love of plants… and my love of people. One of my life mottoes is: life’s better together!

I’ve been running workshops since I was a teenager, but even so, I wasn’t sure if HerbFest would work. In 2021, doggedly dodging COVID lockdowns, we held our first gathering at the Peregian Community Gardens’ Veggie Village: 20 stalls, 4 speakers, and about 250 people curious, passionate plant folk. It felt like planting a seed in the middle of a storm.

Five years on, that seed has grown into a thriving, vibrant festival: 55+ stalls and over a thousand people, many traveling interstate, joining us to learn, share, and celebrate herbs together.

Whilst HerbFest might have started with me, it’s YOU, our community who’ve made it the incredible event it is!

How do I know that!? Cause everyone tells me!

  • The quality of the speakers.

  • The amazing quality of the products and knowledgeable stallholders.

  • The kind friendliness and warm and loving atmosphere created by every single person there.

I’m so proud to be part of our epic herbal medicine community and I can’t wait to hang out with you all again this June (and every June thereafter!)

When I’m not running HerbFest, I teach home herbal medicine skills so you can care for yourself and your family with ease! In-person events on the Sunshine Coast, online self-paced and my flagship community membership, the Home Herbalist Club. Come learn with me!

What HerbFest’s all about

Community health and wellbeing

HerbFest is more than a moment in time; it’s a catalyst. A place where skills are shared, confidence is built, and community health expands outward from the ground up.

We’re not waiting for a healthier future; we’re creating it! By helping people reclaim practical knowledge, deepen their connection to nature, and remember that resilience grows in relationship.

When one person learns how to care for their family with herbs, that strength ripples outward. When one household feels more capable, the whole community becomes steadier.

At HerbFest, every workshop, every conversation, every locally-crafted product strengthens the web between us. This is how momentum builds. This is how we grow the future…. together!

Planet friendly, ethical + sustainable

We are not separate from the living world, we’re simply nature in human form. The same wild intelligence that grows in leaf and root breathes through us.

Ethical herbalism asks us to give back as deeply as we receive: to protect the soil, honour the waters, harvest with reverence, and safeguard the ecosystems that sustain us all. Care for the Earth is not an optional extra, it is woven into every choice we make

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is the heartbeat of HerbFest. I believe in relationships that nourish everyone involved.

It’s built on mutual benefit: between educators and participants, organisers and sponsors, people and place. We show up for one another. We honour the land that holds us. We celebrate the skills, stories, and resources each person brings. Nothing here is one-way. Everything is relational. In every conversation, every exchange, every shared meal and shared idea, we are practicing a culture of mutual support… because community thrives when we all rise together.