We welcome you!

Beloved Herbs is the online sanctuary of herbalists and gardeners Deb Soule and Lauren Valle and friends. We offer classes in plant wisdom, community herbalism, gardening and relationship-building with plants, pollinators, the elements and Earth herself.

Deb and Lauren both live and work on the coast of Maine and spend many hours together in the garden, making herbal remedies, cooking, mending, praying at sunrise, and exploring our shared devotion to Earth-based lunar, solar and seasonal rhythms from our Celtic and Mediterranean ancestors.

Our friendship and collaboration is rooted in our joy and love for the plants. This is the spirit that we bring to the classes we offer at Beloved Herbs.

We know the plants to be our elders, guides, teachers and healers. We bow to them as wise, magnanimous beings who are leading us on a journey back to open-hearted sovereignty and the innate, biological capacity we all have to access the vital force of healing. During these times, the plants are profoundly supporting us as we reweave ourselves back to wholeness and remember who we are. From this place we can offer our gifts and take up our place in our families, communities, and the web of life.

Deb Soule is the founder of Avena Botanicals and has been growing medicinal herbs, making herbal remedies and serving as a community herbalist for forty years in the coast of Maine. 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. She is the author of several books, including How to Move Like a Gardener and The Healing Garden. Her latest book, Notes from the Hummingbird Cooridor, shares her deep connection to the hummingbirds.

Lauren Valle has been in practice as a community herbalist for ten years. She is a founder of a community center in Belfast, Maine where she holds her apothecary and tends the seeds of community care, art, culture-building, saying “Thank you, yes!” to a thriving future. She spends her days seeing clients in person and online through her herbal practice Marigold Healing Arts. She is a Plant Initiation Facilitator, a painter, a mother and a devotee of the ocean. She has been farming, gardening and learning from the plants for nearly twenty years.