Your bridge to the next part of your guiding journey.
Incorporation and Practice Development for Guides
Welcome to Acorn Programs for Guides
Scroll Craft 2025 Retreat: Program, Accommodations and Meals
All inclusive prices cover program fee, supplies, lodging and all meals for 3 nights and 3 days starting with dinner upon arrival and ending with lunch before departure. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free or other specific food needs, allergies, or restrictions can be accommodated. Tea, coffee, and hot cocoa will be available throughout the day in the fireside room. Guest fridge and microwave available at all times.
Business and Practice Development: Planning and creating your guiding practice.
A nature-based approach to marketing, uniquely designed for trained guides who are interested in building their guiding practice, via instructor-led live group-mentoring sessions and permanent access to an extensive online course.
SELF DIRECTED version of Business and Practice Development Course
Access to our extensive online resource library and forum without instructor-led live group-mentoring sessions. Uniquely designed for trained guides who are interested in building their guiding practice.
Acorn Programs recently held a Guide Pricing Survey from which we were able to offer a snapshot of the various factors that impact how guides are thinking about and considering their pricing structures. The aim is to provide guides with some supportive information to help determine what will work for within the context of a guide's custom circumstances.
Meet The Team
Acorn Programs co-founders Nadine Mazzola and Tam Willey
Nadine Mazzola (she/her) has been a Certified Forest Therapy Guide since 2015 based in Acton, MA. She founded her guiding business, New England Nature and Forest Therapy, in 2016. Nadine guides regularly and has formed partnerships with multiple organizations, She also does speaking engagements on forest therapy and occasional consulting with a variety of organizations. Nadine has also been a trainer/mentor with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy and has a business and marketing background spanning twenty-five years.
In 2019, Nadine added award-winning author to her list of accomplishments. She wrote the book “Forest Bathing with Your Dog”, which won four awards. The book combines the practice of forest therapy with our practice of walking our dogs and elevates the depth and meaning of both. She has been featured on PBS Windows to the Wild twice, ABC’s Chronicle and in the Boston Globe and Boston Magazine. In addition to Nadine’s business and marketing background, she was also formerly a world professional pocket billiards player competing on the Women's Professional Billiard Tour. Nadine has been guiding forest therapy walks since 2015. Also, an artist, she facilitates expressive arts classes often incorporating elements of forest therapy throughout.
Tam Willey (they/them) is a Certified Forest Therapy Guide, trainer, mentor and teacher with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy and is the founder of Toadstool Walks, a guiding practice based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tam has been self-employed since 2005 and brings over 15 years of experience with marketing, promotion, website management, administrative organization, content creation, bookkeeping, tax-filing, and overall personal professionalism.
Tam’s guiding practice is informed by their background as a local handy person, children’s woodworking instructor, custodian, skateboarder, musician, artist, mentor, and their queer and gender expansive lived experience, serving and uplifting LGBTQ Folks through BAGLY, The Theater Offensive’s True Colors, Black and Pink, and The Venture Out Project. Tam has guided forest therapy in collaboration with The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, The Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Mass Audubon, Peabody Essex Museum, Speak For The Trees, Boston Harbor Now and more. Tam is curious about the ways that forest therapy can build collective empathy and compassion to deepen and broaden relationships, by supporting health and healing for all beings.
