Botanical Sanctuaries

Sanctuary Steward: Carol Thomas

Onalaska, WA

Sanctuary Steward: Wendy Wagoner
Cedarville, MI

Creekside Herbs & Art is a family owned/run business, which is located off the beaten path, set back amongst ancient white pines and a meandering creek, in the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Creekside is situated on 25 acres of white pines, balsam, spruce and cedar. The herb farm, 36’ dome (glass blowing studio), and garden shop are based on spiritual thinking fro m many sources, largely based on my Native American heritage. At Creekside, our goal is to promote a sense of connection and integration throughout our community.

Sanctuary Steward:  Michael Laurie
Vashon Island, WA

Dragonfly Medicinals is located on 3.5 acres on Vashon Island in Washington State, a short ferry ride away from Seattle. I have lived on Vashon Island for 6 years and in Washington State for 29 years. 20 months ago, I purchased the home/office and 3.5 acres where I am currently growing medicinal herbs. While I have been making and selling medicinal herb tinctures and oils for over 6 years, I have spent the last 20 months planting herbs and working on other sustainability projects here. I now have small numbers of over 140 species of medicinal herbs growing here. Plants I have established on the site that are on the UpS at risk or to watch lists are: American ginseng, arnica, black cohosh, bloodroot, echinacea, gentian, goldenseal, lobelia, maidenhair fern, Oregon grape, wild yam, and yerba mansa. I hope to establish more at risk and to watch plants in the future. Now that I have many well- established medicinal herbs on the site I have started saving seeds and plan to grow medicinal herb starts for sale next spring at the Vashon Farmer’s Market.

Sanctuary Stewards: Tonya Whitedeer & ThreeCrows Cargill
Laytonville, CA

We have named our land Medicine Creek, for not only are there wonderful healing plants of the Green Nations everywhere but there is also a sacred feeling of calm and serenity throughout the ten acres. We know that we were shown the way to this wonderful haven to nurture it back to how it once was when our ancestors lived upon this small section of our Mother Earth. There are legends to tell about the ones that walked upon this land ~ the Legend of the Red Tree Spirit that comes from a fallen Redwood Giant that is slowly going back into the Earth is one. This venture is a lifetime dream. Medicine trails have been laid out by listening to the voices of the plants speaking to us, giving direction and guiding this simple two-legged to where each medicine should know a new home. At this time there is wild ginger, spikenard, black cohosh, goldenseal, angelica, and a wild rose garden. Growing in other areas are plants of sacred white sage, tobacco, sweet grass, comfrey and many others.

Sanctuary Stewards: Halyna Shepko & Richard Hamilton
New Paltz, NY

Shawangunk (pronounced Shongum in Algonquin), a mountain range 90 miles north of
New York City, translates to "near and high place where you go south", directed Native Americans traveling between the Appalachian Mountains to the Hudson River Valley. We decided to use the directions of the earth and these mountains behind our farm as our guide as well. Enveloped by the Shawangunk Ridge on the north and the Hudson Highlands on the south, we have created a small family farm where we raise our three (soon to be four) homeschooled children, Icelandic sheep, Toggenburg goats, ducks, chickens, a horse and angora rabbits. Even though farms in our area are being sold and developed quicker than any of us ever imagined, I feel a strong calling for a lifestyle that is connected to the earth, seasons, the sun, the circles of life, family, animals, wildlife, community and plants. We have been able to fulfill that dream and my Ukrainian mother who lives across the street with her Russian husband help make it a cross-cultural, three-generational haven.

Sanctuary Steward: Dodie Harte
Big Oak Flat, California

Our land is 600 acres in the foothills of central California, east of the central valley and at an elevation of 2,200 feet. We are in a transition zone between chaparral and forest; we have rolling hills with oaks, bull pines and much manzanita and red root. Rainfall is approximately 25 inches per year, occurring between October and May. The summers are hot and dry and the winters mild.  We have been owners of this land for three years.

Sanctuary Steward:  Gigi Stafne
Long Lake, WI

We are pleased to announce that our 40 acres of land in northern Wisconsin has been added as a UpS Botanical Sanctuary this year, creating one more niche of sacred ecological protection. The Center For Healing Arts Herb & Eco-School relocated its main teaching space to this location nearly 4 years ago. It is a beautiful ecologically diverse area that is a neighbor to the National Ice Age Trail (Chippewa Moraine) in Wisconsin.
Many exciting plants and projects have been germinating throughout this phase and in 2004 they began to bud and bloom:

Sanctuary Steward: Cindy Bloom
Union, Illinois

The Cherokee people say there is a place in the Smokey Mountains where the animals go to be healed. The Creator warned the people not to follow the wounded animals to this magical lake or the wild game would vanish forever. The animals guard this place and keep it invisible to the human eye. It is said that if we continue to respect and protect the animals as the Creator has asked, that we, too, one day may be able to see these healing waters. This story is ancient but its lesson is consciously modern. Our Creation stories, culture and world view are based on our inter-relationship with all life. Our behavior is dictated by Natural Laws. This way of life is reinforced by the Creator’s message in the story.

Sanctuary Stewards: Terrence Fox & Family
Miles City, MT

Our family owns, or has under contract and operates about 20,000 acres of plains, hills and mountainous semi-arid land in southeast Montana between the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers. We call this land Buck Mountain Ranch. This beautiful country ranges from an elevation of 2,500 to 3,400 feet. The upper elevations, above 2,800 feet, support large stands of yellow pine and juniper. This high plains paradise was used as range land. Now the pristine wilderness is managed for the benefit of the abundant flora and fauna found thereon.

Sanctuary Stewards:  Tammi & Chris Hartung
Canyon City, CO

Desert Canyon Farm & Learning Center is a 5 acre certified organic farm and botanical school located in the high mountain desert of southern Colorado. It has been in existence in this location for 6 years and is home to a wide diversity of plant, fauna and people.
Existing on the land are over 300 species of native plants, many of which are medicinal.  Dozens of varieties of trees have been planted, some of which are native, others are not, all are water wise. The mother gardens serve as propagation sources and outdoor classrooms.

Sanctuary Steward: Rebecca Gilbert
Chilmark, MA

Native Earth Teaching Farm is located in Chilmark on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. My grandmother bought this farm in the 1920’s from the estate of a whaling captain’s wife. One hundred fifty years ago it was mostly naked of cover, sheep were everywhere and the walls were being built by African slaves and Indians paid mostly in rum. The only trees were by the brook and in the woodlots. Now it is mostly woods and swamp with about five acres of the 30 under cultivation and inhabited. Our habitat is very diverse for it’s size, with lots of edges. It includes pine-oak succession uplands, swamp pockets, swamp along brook, blueberry thickets, cotton grass, and the largest patch of inkberry bushes the state biologists and Audubon people had ever seen!

Sanctuary Stewards: Joann, Emmy, Hannah and Rick Vollmer

Thornton, New Hampshire

Our twenty-acre wilderness forest land in Thornton, New Hampshire, bordering the White Mountain National Forest is mountainous land consisting of areas of both mixed hardwood and evergreen and is home to black bear, deer and moose. Plants already growing here include: sarsaparilla, goldthread, partridgeberry, pipsissewa, lady’s slipper, yellow violets and trillium.

Sanctuary Steward: Gary Schroeder

Franktown, Colorado

Wild Wind Ranch is a 50-acre horse ranch located in Douglas County, CO, at the northern-most edge of the Black Forest bioregion at an elevation of approximately 6,400 feet. We purchased the land about 10 years ago, before Douglas County became the fastest growing county in the US. We built our home on the land six years ago and began raising sport horses. Despite the area’s rapidly growing population, our ranch is frequently visited by mule deer, coyote, fox, raccoon, skunk, porcupine and an occasional elk or pronghorn. Overhead, hawks and turkey vultures can be spotted circling for hours above the caprock cliffs that extend north to the edge of our property.

Stewards: Ceara and Faye Foley

Leicester, NC

 As a child I spent all of my “free” time in Nature developing relationships with plants rather than people. I truly feel that these plants had aided my evolution more than any other beings. So, naturally when I decided to officially devote my life to becoming an herbalist, I wanted to study with them rather than study them with someone else. I am deeply blessed to have found Soulflower Botanical Sanctuary to fulfill this purpose and to call it my home.

Sanctuary Stewards: Kate and Dan Rakosky
West Kingston, RI

We live in a tiny pre-revolution era village called Usquepaug, Rhode Island located in rural South County. Thirteen years ago it was our great blessing to become stewards of this land. The two-acre parcel we affectionately call Sagewood was once part of a nearly 300-year-old farm. The house is still intact, retaining the charm of a simpler time. The old stone barn foundation and surrounding stone walls have had been enveloped by the returning woodlands and beautiful gardens.

Sanctuary Steward: Randy Crouch

Clyde, NC

Owl Mountain Herbs is now part of the UpS Sanctuary Network and we are honored to be included among the other sanctuary stewards.

We purchased approximately five acres of 90% wooded mountain property in the Fines Creek area of Clyde, North Carolina in 1994.   After many years of “visiting” the land we love and planting at-risk and endangered medicinal plants we moved into our log home in December 2004.  It was built to suit our simple needs and fit into our woodland surroundings. It is a blessing to live in a place where you are glad to be home and it is here, tucked away on Owl Mountain Road, that we find peace. 

Rutland, Ohio

This 68-acre piece of certified organic land is located in Rutland Township, Ohio about 2 miles from the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary.  Originally a corn and cattle farm, Frontier Natural Products Co-op purchased the land in 1998 to set up the National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs and save the timber from being logged out.  The farm was set up by Frontier for research on best cultivation practices for at-risk medicinal herbs.  In 2000 the property and project was donated to the current owner Rural Action Inc., a regional non-profit organization that promotes social, economic and environmental justice in Appalachian Ohio.  The farm, now known as Rural Action’s Research and Education Center is used as a model demonstration & education farm that showcases sustainable forestry and agriculture practices and continues to work with growers and producers of medicinal herbs throughout the region.  The farm also has facilities to serve as a retreat or meeting space and is available for rentals.  The farm has continued to generate basic research focused around cultivation of at-risk medicinals and cooperates with several universities and graduate students on new and on-going research projects. 

Sanctuary Stewards: Sonja Hunt & Leslie Alexander
Franklin, PA

The idea for Restoration Herbs was conceived on a windy beach in Scotland, UK in May 2004 and was born in Franklin, PA in June 2005. After several months of searching we finally found this property tucked away in a corner with an acre of woods falling down to a creek behind the house and 5 acres of pasture in front. This we are slowly turning into formal and informal herb gardens, vegetable plots and will soon begin planting an orchard and a wild flower meadow.

Steward: Steve Moring

Oskaloosa, KS 

Vajra Herb Farm was purchased in 1996 with the intent of establishing a medicinal herb farm, research facility and retreat center.  The farm consists of 45 acres of woodland, prairie savanna, stream, valley and upland areas. The firs two years were devoted to prairie reclamation by brush clearing, spring burning and reseeding with prairie grasses and forbes.

Steward: Mariam Massaro

Worthington, MA 

Singing Brook Farm is land richly endowed with native species including: Black Cohosh, Bloodroot, Partridge Berry, Ladies Slipper, Goldthread, Maidenhair Fern, Spikenard as well as others on the UpS “At Risk” and “To Watch” lists. Open to the public one day per week in the summer months for tours, the farm also offers workshops, classes and ceremonial events, water garden tours, apprenticeships for Wise Ways Herbals, organic planting and harvesting throughout the year.

Sanctuary Stewards: Sara Katz & Ed Smith

Williams, OR 

In 1993 Sara Katz and Ed Smith, founders and owners of Herb Parm, purchased a lovely 85 acre farm in southern Oregon. While the lay of the land was beautiful to behold, this farmland had been over-grazed by sheep and cattle for the prior 20 years, so the job before us was (and is) to restore the fertility to the land that had captured our hearts and vision.

Stewards: Susan Clearwater & Dale Edson

Martinsville, IN  46151

1999 has been a busy and fulfilling 1st year at the Green Turtle Botanical Sanctuary.  Our 50 acre sanctuary is a combination of rolling hills with woodlands, creeks, a small lake and pond, 2 fields with clay soil, and one bottom field blessed with some of the best soil in the county.  Last year we planted a large garden including Echinacea purpurea, pleurisy root, blue vervain, ginkgo, paw paw, persimmon, butternut and slippery elm starts. The warmth of spring days also welcomed hundreds of Panax quinquefolius babies, which Dale had planted 18 months earlier, and several nice patches of goldenseal, planted 2-3 years earlier from roots.

Steward: Robert Eidus

Marshall, NC

We have been very busy at Eagle Feather Farm this year, especially on the local level.  We were one of six farms on the Carolina Farm Stewardship Assoc 1999 Mountain Farm Tour where over 150 people visited and attended workshops on preparing a fall ginseng bed and spraying with goldenseal spray as well as tours of the center.  We have also been contracted to provide 22 pounds of ginseng seed to two NC Mountain county Extension offices. That should produce about 80,000 baby plants in the spring!

Steward: Donna Wood Eaton

Harwich, MA 

This 7 acre farm, bounded by town-owned “Greenspace” and privately owned undeveloped woodlands is the home of Cedar Spring Herb Farm. Comprised of 4 acres of wooded uplands with 1 ½ acres vernal pool and 1 ½ acres cedar swamp, many wild plants thrive in this specific habitat: pink ladies slipper, pipsissewa, wintergreen, high and lowbush blueberries, sweet fern, cedar, pine, oak and poke root. Mosses, ferns, lichens and fungi abound. Under cultivation are black and blue cohoshes, bloodroot, solomon’s seal and many other medicinal herbs as well.

Stewards: Jennifer Smith, Katy Farrar and John Robertson
Union Grove, NC

We are a budding educational center nestled at the base of the Brushy Mountains in the small town of Union Grove, North Carolina. (Home of the Fiddlers Convention since 1924J). Our land is a 32-acre site that consists of 12 acres of pine forest, a 4-acre field, a 4-acre home and garden area, and 12 acres of hardwood forest. You are welcomed onto our property by an enormous, wise, 300 year old oak tree that is 19 feet in circumference.

Stewards: Chin Velasquez & Raleigh Mason
Goshen, VA

We are honored and proud to introduce our land now as an established Botanical Sanctuary in the United Plant Savers network. Our Botanical Sanctuary is a sacred space we have created at our home on a little over 2 acres of land, located 15 miles west of Lexington, VA, bordering the George Washington National Forest, in between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountain ranges.  In the 3 years that we’ve lived in Goshen, VA, or more accurately, “Little California”, we have been blessed with excellent soil that gives us beautiful gardens where I plant, grow and harvest the herbs that go into Soothing Herbals’ line of products. There are several perennial and annual garden beds that are homes to calendula, chamomile, comfrey, St. Johnswort, arnica, lavender, rosemary, monarda, echinacea purpurea and paradoxa, marshmallow, elecampane, sage, thyme, horehound, angelica, valerian, lobelia, butterfly weed and many, many more. We are also blessed to have native medicinal “at-risk” plants growing wild in our woods, such as black cohosh and bloodroot.

Sanctuary Steward: Mary Pat Palmer
Philo, CA

When I was pregnant with my daughter Maia, I often sat in the middle of a fairy ring in meditation.  A fairy ring is created by the death of a mother redwood.  The mother redwood grows tall and straight and around her grow her same-aged children.  The mother dies naturally, or perhaps is logged, and the ring of redwoods remains. Young redwoods are the mother; not seeds thrown off but created from her very body. The ring of trees that results has a very powerful energy.  They are as ancient as the original mother.  My gestation fairy ring was in Sebastopol, California and the trees perhaps one hundred years old. 

Sanctuary Steward: Lalita Karoli
South Woodstock, VT

 We are so pleased to be accepted as a Botanical Sanctuary with United Plant Savers. We thought that we always were, and now have the inspiration to live up to the title and to share the possibility with others. These precious 23 acres we steward are part of densely covered forest of deep shade on a south-facing slope. Hemlock, maple and some surviving elm surround the babbling brook that traverses the property and provides a refuge for rare salamanders among ancient moss covered stonewalls. The soil is moist and black, therein you will find a community of medicinals thriving: nodding trillium, stone root, bloodroot, true solomon’s seal, maidenhair fern, jack-in-the-pulpit and many wild mushrooms flourish.

Sanctuary Steward: Dr. Lisa Yates
Mono Centre, Ontario

Late May 2004 I am on an early evening walk after a thunderstorm.  The night was warm and fresh and the rolling hills where irresistible. Ten minutes into the stroll I thought I had stepped on a fallen hawthorn branch and the thorns had gone into my ankle.  No, a rattlesnake had just struck me.  Rare for this particular area.  Not to panic, I limped back to the house, made a poultice of plantain and wrapped the ankle. That night the dreams came.  I saw a large parcel of land with an old cabin made of huge logs.  Inside the cabin was a photo of an aboriginal man. Walking the property, I came upon huge boulders inside the forest.  Sitting on one of the huge rocks was the same man but now much younger.

Sanctuary Stewards: Deb Soule, Liz Ferraro and Julia Yelton
West Rockport, ME

Avena Botanicals one-acre medicinal herb garden is situated on 30 acres of field and forest that borders 6000 acres of undeveloped woods and wetlands. We are on a south-facing slope, 400 feet above sea level, only 4 miles from the ocean. Being in a rural area, we are blessed with a diverse bird population, and on occasion we see deer, moose and signs of coyote and fox. Adjacent to the garden is an old 1800's farmhouse in which Avena Botanicals herbal apothecary creates various medicinal remedies. 65% of the herbs used in our products are grown in our organic gardens or wild-harvested in nearby fields or islands. All of our work, from the planting of seeds, to the tending and harvesting of our herbs, to the making of our remedies is done by hand. We strive to live and do business in a way that honors and respects the natural world, traditional plant knowledge and our community at large. We offer a variety of herbal classes, plant walks and workshops year round through our sister organization, Avena Institute.

Steward: Lisa Bedner, R.N., A.H.G.
Bloomington Springs, TN

My heart is full that these 23 acres have been added to the Ups Sanctuary network. Many Native American Nations once shared this area of Middle Tennessee near Cookeville as a source of plant medicines. The elders have told me that when the Cherokee and others were forced to move further north and east, that there were many medicine plants they could no longer find in the mountains. Medicine women traveled with gathering parties to this area to find the needed plants. As a member of one of the Native American nomadic tribes, the Teehahnahmah, I was taught that our healers knew to come here for the medicine plants.

Stewards: David and Lena Welker
Richmond, VA

We acquired the land that was to become Wildcroft Hollow Botanical Sanctuary in June of 2004. We had both been wishing and dreaming such a place for years. I was looking for a place to take care of, a place where I could build my home for myself, and the woman I love, a place where we would belong. Lena was looking for the same things ~ a garden, a cabin, and, I think, a man who could help her build those things. Shortly after closing on the land, we were married there.

Stewards: Monica and Aubrey Josh Skye
Porcupine District, Selfridge, ND

My husband and I wished to get out of the madness of industrialized, and colonized high impact city living. After cramped apartment living in Phoenix we felt in awe with the expansiveness of the open Northern Plains landscape in rural North Dakota. During a family reunion in the summer of 2000, we visited Standing Rock, my Lakota husband's ancestral homeland, and we decided to stay. Since housing is hard to come by here, we camped out all summer until we found a place in mid September. We appreciate the beautiful land base of The Standing Rock reservation, and feel that there are infinite possibilities here. We realize that open green space contributes to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being and were inspired to get back to the land. We began doing organic gardening that led to form a community garden project, box gardens, and the first botanical sanctuary on tribal lands. We started out by requesting that a few acres surrounding our home be set aside for the sanctuary, but the Tribal Council embraced the idea and expanded the sanctuary to include 85 acres in this large watershed area which includes a spring and rare prairie plants.