Classes & Events

2027 Medicinal Herb Garden Walks
Avena Botanicals' Gardens
Led by herbalist and Biodynamic gardener Deb Soule

Join herbalist and gardener Deb Soule in exploring the lush beauty of the medicinal herb gardens at Avena Botanicals in Rockport, Maine -- just a ten minute drive from the beautiful ocean coast. Deb is the author of the book The Healing Garden, an inspiring guide to herb gardening and crafting herbal remedies. She is the founder of Avena Botanicals, an herbal apothecary that grows ingredients for its artisanal herbal products in the gardens she began creating there decades ago.

In this delightful hour-long tour, Deb will invite you into the pollinator Sanctuary Garden, where you will learn about a variety of medicinal plants that you can add to your own garden for your own beneficial use. Many of these herbs are also of benefit to hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

We are offering only a few limited attendance herb walks in the summer of 2026. Please join us! Children ages four and under may attend the event for free. Adults and children ages 5 and older may buy a general admission ticket. No tickets will be sold at the gate on the day of the event.

Please limit your attendance to one garden walk per summer, to give others who are interested an opportunity to attend. Spaces are limited and tickets sell out each year.

If you appreciate our work, please also consider donating to support the pollinator Sanctuary Garden.

Wednesday, June 16, 3-4 PM

Wednesday, June 30, 3-4 PM

Wednesday, July 14, 3-4 PM

Wednesday, July 21, 3-4 PM

Wednesday, August 4, 3-4 PM

Wednesday, August 11, 3-4 PM

Forty Beloved Herbs: A Self-Paced Online Herbal Learning Course

Herbalist Deb Soule and her dear friend, herbalist Lauren Valle, are pleased to present this self-paced course featuring their forty favorite herbs.

This course is geared toward a wide range of herbalists, herb lovers, and gardeners. It is geared toward new explorers, lifelong learners, parents deepening their herbal toolkit for their families, clinical practitioners, and community care workers. Being in relationship with the healing plants is an ancestral memory we all carry in our blood. The goal of this course is that you will be uplifted with the confidence to work with each of these forty beloved herbs in a personal, family, or community setting.

Deb offers the plant wisdom she has gathered from her four decades of tending Avena's Biodynamic medicinal herb sanctuary and apothecary. She brings her open heart, intuition, experience, and keen observation developed from many seasons in the garden with her hands in the soil, along with her devotion to sharing the healing gifts of plants with the world and protecting pollinators.

Lauren brings her twenty years of experience gardening and working with herbs and nine years of clinical practice as a community herbalist. In her practice, she weaves together elements of Western herbalism, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, pulse diagnosis, Plant Spirit Healing, and nutrition.

🌸 Classes include: 🌸

Harvesting, drying, and storage and various preparations of herbs.
How these herbs grow in the garden, or where to responsibly find them in the wild.
Materia Medica, energetics, and the therapeutic qualities of the herbs.
How these herbs support us on physical, emotional, & spiritual levels.
Daily and seasonal wellness.
Prayer, relationship, and ritual.

🌸 You will receive: 🌸

20 hour-and-a-half recorded Zoom classes with herbalists Deb Soule and Lauren Valle, covering two herbs in each class.
Three recorded Zoom OFFICE HOURS hosted by Deb and Lauren. Make a cup of tea and listen to some enlightening Q&A.
Access to the course content online for three years. You can download the content to your own devices to keep forever.
A handout with Materia Medica and info on the herbs for each class.
Additional resources and recommended reading.

Deb and Lauren will be your guides in the work of weaving herbs back into our daily lives, our families, and our communities. They believe that this work is an essential part of healing humanity's relationship with ourselves and Nature. Together we can create a future where all Beings have the right to thrive.

Learn More & Register Here

Herbal Rhythms & Relationships: Online Course
January - April 2027

In Herbal Rhythms & Relationships, herbalists Deb Soule and Lauren Valle weave practical, foundational herbal skills — energetics, formulas, the art of the herbal conversation, and responding to community needs, with their intuitive, soul-based approach — how the herbs are guiding us in healing on ALL levels. Deepen into the seasonal, solar, and lunar rhythms alongside our own body rhythms. Ground and strengthen relationships — with the plants, ourselves, our community, our ancestors, and with Earth herself. Deb and Lauren each bring forward their unique intuitive gifts borne from their decades of gardening, making medicines, seeing clients, and ongoing studies.

The goal of this course is to strengthen your confidence to bring forward your unique work with the herbs, wherever you are on your herbal journey. To trust what you know and be comfortable in caring for yourself, your family, and your community with herbs.

In this course, you will deepen with some of the sixty herbs from the Beloved Herbs apothecary and enter into relationship with a few new herbs.

🌸 This course will bring you: 🌸

Eight hour-and-a-half live classes with Deb and Lauren. All classes take place on Thursdays, 5:30-7pm EST.
Recordings, posted on the class website the next day if you can't join in live.
Comprehensive handouts for each class topic.
4 monthly Q&A Office Hours where you can chat with Deb and Lauren and ask questions. Office hours will be recorded for those who cannot attend.
2 Student Sharing Circles — join other students in small groups on Zoom to connect and learn together (optional!)
An invitation to join our Mighty Networks community forum to connect with other Beloved Herbs students (optional!)

Learn More & Register Here

Contemplative Practice in Avena Botanicals' Sanctuary Garden
Fridays, May 21 - September 10, 2027 from 7:30 - 8:30 am
Avena Botanicals

Join us weekly to share contemplative silence in our Sanctuary Garden. We warmly invite people of all faiths (or none), to sit quietly and be nourished by birdsong, the wind, shared community silence, and the healing gifts our gardens embody. Quietly come and leave as you wish between 7:30 - 8:30 am. Several benches for sitting are in the center of our Sanctuary Garden.

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