The Mushroom Forager’s Sketchbook

September is the moment — the woodland floor at its most generous, brackets and boletes and chicken-of-the-woods each a small architectural event. This workshop is about learning how to look, to see, and to draw. Drawing is how you truly document what you found — a study that required you to look long enough to understand what you were seeing. Cap shape, gill structure, the particular heft of a stipe — these are the things a sketchbook captures and a memory loses. The morning begins with a guided fungi walk on Mt. Cuba’s grounds, where you’ll make field notes and quick sketches in the landscape, including a short exercise drawing mushrooms within their habitat. Studio drawing follows, using wild and cultivated specimens sourced — fresh material you can handle, compare, and observe at your own pace. You’ll leave with a completed sketchbook spread, a practiced eye for fungal form, and skills you can bring back to the field on every future foray. All skill levels welcome. Some drawing experience is helpful but not required. Please bring your lunch. Click here to review the list of provided materials and those that you will need to bring to the class. This program takes place in-person at Mt. Cuba Center Friday, September 25, 2026. About the Instructor: Margaret Saylor is a working studio artist based in southeastern Pennsylvania. She works primarily in egg tempera on panel and graphite on vellum, with paintings and drawings that focus on plants, fungi, and the intimate ecology of the forest floor — rendered with the precision of a field naturalist and the eye of a designer. Her work is held in the permanent collection at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University, and she teaches at Mt. Cuba Center, Longwood Gardens, Jenkins Arboretum, and Wayne Art Center, among others. A recipient of a botanical artist residency at Oak Spring Garden Foundation, she also serves as editor and designer of The Botanical Artist, the quarterly journal of the American Society of Botanical Artists. REGISTER NOW: General Public Individual+ & Dual+ Members Supporter, Advocate & Conservator Members