In 2023, we were contacted by Herbal Academy to work on a herb collaboration piece. Yes please. We love herbs. We grow them, we eat them, we make medicinal salves from them, we smell them, and they are basically a natural bug repellent from invasive insects that like to nest in gardens, so given a chance to create a piece dedicated to herbs was a really exciting idea.
So we set out in 2023 to collect as many herbs as we could find. This ended up being a bit more challenging than we had first thought. There was no single farm that was growing herbs, not in the variety we wanted. We ended up driving to small herb gardens (which were basically someone's home that had a good selection of herbs), made contact with small flower farms as all farms have herbs growing in them to deter harmful insects away, found some herbs growing in friends' yards, and we would occasionally find mullein and chicory on the side of the road. If there was an herb local to us, we were on a mission to find them and learn about them.
So now I was left with a couple of presses filled with layers and layers of herbs, which was an absolutely wonderful thing, but designing with them had to wait another 10 months or so as I was occupied with other projects.
November/December of 2025 rolled around, our garden duties outside were done, irrigation water turned off, and my studio tables were a clean slate. I felt a good surge of creativity opening up in me. I laid out all 109 sheets of herbs we had collected and began playing around with design and color concept, but I knew I wanted to highlight the beautiful hibiscus flowers and poppies (pods and flowers). I also wanted to group more flowers (we group a lot of flowers, bushes, and small trees in our own garden, so it made sense to try it out on paper) this time as well, and the number three is a perfect number for grouping. Little by little, things took on a shape, adjustments were made, more shape, etc., etc.
The Herb Garden journey from Spring 2023 to Spring 2026 was a little unpredictable, but in the end, everything fell into place just as it needed to. I love this piece so much not only for its beauty and color scheme, but that it shares a message of how much of a necessity herbs are in our lives. Each piece I create gives me more and more appreciation for our Earth and for farmers and stewards of the land that help cultivate such beneficial beauty.
The original was sized 28" x 35". We released our prints with two size offerings:
This is the full list of herbs in this piece: Lavender, Poppy, Echinacea, Hibiscus, Wild Rose, Passion Flower, Dill, Bachelor Button, Bee Balm, Calendula, Coreopsis, Geranium, Viola, Elderberry, Comfrey, Rosemary, Pansy, Mallow, Marigold, Butterfly Milkweed, Raspberry, Chamomile, Rue, Ladys Mantles, Motherwort, Thyme, Woodland Sage, Borage, Clover, Common Fumitory, Wormwood, Catnip, Wild Chives, Mullein, Anise Hyssop, etc.
