It is now my eighth season managing the gardens at Merryspring Nature Center in Camden, ME where I also have lead a small internship and teach a Backyard Herbalism series.  My journey to the area began at Avena Botanicals in Rockport, ME where I spent two seasons managing the production garden. I’ve grown herbs and flowers at various farms in the northeast including Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in NY and Farmacy Herbs in Rhode Island. For the past ten years I have also been diligently tending plants in private gardens throughout the midcoast ranging from annual flower and herb beds to mixed perennial borders, new native plantings, and even cemetery garden plots. My background in visual arts and a degree in painting set the visual foundation of how I would come to see gardens as just larger, living works of art.

My connection to plants was birthed in NYC, where the mugwort growing from the cracks in the sidewalks gave me visions of studying more deeply with the plants. It lead me to rural Rutland, OH to intern at United Plant Savers Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary and to study herbal medicine with a variety of amazing teachers, and the plants themselves, across the US. I am a co-collaborator of the Maine Herbal Gathering – which has been on hold since 2020- and a contributing writer to In Relation with Plant Beings Zine among other small publications and websites.

Where did your connection to the plants begin? Are you looking to deepen that connection?  Or to plant the seed? I would love to talk with you about it.

Please join me at a class or consult!

-denise