Deb Soule's biodynamic approach at Avena Botanical gardens helps create a sacred environment for all beings that enter the gardens. As humans, let's be respectful and welcoming to the seen and unseen ones whose presence in our gardens and woodlands brings harmony, balance, and joy.  

Herbal gardens offer sanctuary for pollinators, people, and elemental beings. Flowering plants and trees, hedgerows and pathways, arbors and benches, altars, and bells add magical dimensions into a healing garden. A diversity of plants, blooming throughout the gardening season encourages a diversity of pollinators and birds. Hedgerows and bells are friends to Elemental beings. 

Deb Soule practices as an herbalist, educator, and biodynamic gardener and is the author of  The Woman’s Handbook of Healing Herbs and How To Move Like A Gardener: Planting and Preparing Medicines from Plants. Raised in a small town in western Maine, Deb began organic gardening and studying the medicinal uses of herbs at age 16. Her faith in the healing qualities of plants and her love of gardening led Deb to found Avena Botanicals Herbal Apothecary in 1985. Five years earlier, Deb lived in Nepal near three Tibetan monasteries and was deeply moved by the Tibetan people’s commitment to ease physical ailments and mental and emotional upsets through the use of plants, prayer, and other spiritual practices. Deb received a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in 1981. Since then she has devoted her life to working with and understanding the healing gifts medicinal plants and pollinators offer individuals, families, and landscapes. She focuses on using nourishing herbs, flower remedies, whole foods, and meditation as part of her consulting practice. Avena Botanicals’ three-acre medicinal gardens are open to the public year-round, Monday-Friday. Avena is the first Demeter certified biodynamic farm in Maine.

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