ABOUT

OUR BOTÁNICA

NUESTRA BOTÁNICA

Our BOTANICÁ is a space for making medicine and houses ethically grown and harvested plants, grown here on our farm or wildcrafted in the Oregon wilderness. We handcraft herbal smoked salts, tinctures, salves, vinegars, essences, elixirs and hydrosols — each batch an artistic, intuitive medicine in which we deepen our relationship with the plants.

Our medicines are made in the practice of folk herbalism — meaning, our relationship with the plants and the medicine we make with them is a reflection of our indigenous and ancestral ties and the relationship our ancestors had with Mother Earth. Our practice of folk herbalism combines indigenous wisdom, cultural and ancestral tradition, and reliance on the plants as the healers.

Nuestro botica es un espacio para hacer medicinas y alberga las plantas cosechadas éticamente que se han cultivado aquí en nuestra granja o en la naturaleza de Oregón. Fabricamos artesanalmente sales ahumadas a base de hierbas, tinturas, ungüentos, elixires; cada lote es una medicina artística e intuitiva en la que profundizamos nuestra relación con las plantas.

Hacemos nuestras medicina en la práctica de la herbolaria popular, que significa que nuestra relación con las plantas y la medicina que hacemos con ellas es un reflejo de nuestros lazos indígenas y ancestrales, y la relación que nuestros ancestros tenían con la madre Tierra. Nuestra práctica de herbalismo popular combina la sabiduría indígena, la tradición cultural y la dependencia de las plantas como curanderos.

Essie Day Olou began her journey in land tending at the very young age of five . Helping her grandmother on a four acre farm in Gaston Oregon. Essie’s grandmother had taught her the importance of listening to the symbiotic relationship with us plants and animals. At the age of thirteen Essie’s love for flowers blossomed . Every summer she would enjoy helping her adopted mother seed and harvest the family's garden. At this time Essie learned the importance of nurturing the “give and receive relationship”. In 2018 Essie found Wapato Island farm. Wapato Island farm gave Essie a place to grow, live, and flourish in community. Essie started Rise Blooms, flowers grown in tribute to Maya Angelou, our pollinators and for healing in times of injustice. “There is so much we can learn from our grandmothers, mothers and ancestors that bring us to the seed and root of who we are and our journeys. Flowers are the most heartening guides.” Essie’s path in growing on Wapato Island farm on Multnomah territory has brought the teachings of asking the land and plant allies for permission, and the joy of giving. 

Dana Vargas, a multifaceted Chicana artist, tattooer and plant tender. Originally from New York but finding beauty and purpose in Portland for nearly half a decade. Dana has loved plants and gardening for as long as she could remember and has had the opportunity to lovingly tend and learn from the earth at Wapato Island Farm since early 2021. She has also tended to a modest homestead in East Portland for the past 5 years. Dana has spent all her life listening to plants but over the past decade has deepened that knowledge into wisdom through time and dedication. She has studied among many different types of teachers from seeds to Curanderas and has learned so much along the way. By practicing herbalism, tending to the land and deep listening Dana has strengthen her relationship to the natural world, fostering a deeper understanding of the seasons, plants, and animals that surround us. She hopes to continue to work with the dirt for the rest of all her lives to come.

Ayanna is a Portland-grown historian, writer, teacher, and farmer of Black and mixed-European descent. As a mixed-race, trans, non-binary being, they aim to be a bridge-builder across structural forces of separation and distance. They are energized by and committed to everyday practices of liberation cultivated by those most marginalized; making space for grief; and passing on the love, support, and investment they have received from their teachers, elders, and ancestors to the students and young people in their life. 

Their historical research centers lineages of Black feminist and queer healing cosmologies, specifically related to land and earth-based practices. With a background in non-profit program development, youth-work, activism, and education, they bring a passion for teaching and learning through hands-on, direct experience and supporting people to become more intimate with themselves and their purpose. 

The onset of chronic illness in 2017 initiated Ayanna on a path of embodied, spiritual healing and learning from plants as medicine. Their ongoing apprenticeship with plants is braided with mindfulness and meditation practice alongside ancestral relationship building and mending. They are a certified yoga teacher and student of somatics. Their dreams and aspirations include supporting their communities in realizing healing potentials and making food and medicine accessible to QT/BIPOC folx who may not otherwise have access to these forms of nourishment.

Monique Roberson-Lopez Is born and raised in Portland Or, She is Chiricahua Apache, Aztec, Basque, And Latina. She is a wife, mother, and a grandmother. Currently she grows food and medicines with 3 local farms in Portland bringing our community together sharing awareness and the importance to food sovereignty together taking back and relearning our traditional ways. She believes It takes a village. She is an Indigenous food sovereignty land steward, project coordinator, and a parent child support specialist. She is dedicated to helping families concur barriers of historical trauma, and empowering them, emphasizing in Land tending engagement events to strengthen the family bonds. Collectively relearning our culture collectively and passing knowledge and skills for the next 7 generations to come. She is a puller with 7 waters canoe family. In her free time, she loves to RELAX (lol what’s that!) She loves to travel and spend time with her family and adorable puppy named Puppy.

Nia Malone has grown up on Wapato Island Farm with her family and community.  Her passions include creating all things that revolve around plants and flowers.   Tattooing is her main artistic expression, taught under Dana Vargas, but also enjoys digital art, playing music and singing.  Nia’s work can be seen throughout the farm on textiles, stickers, IG, and this website.  ~ You may see her walking around the farm with her Dogs Pooch and Itsku. 

Gabriella Gonzalez (also known as Lago) is a Culinary Herbalist, Holistic Nutritionist, Abortion Doula and resident at Wapato Island Farm. Her roots are mixed Nicaragüense Indigenous, Latina & Slavic. Her passion for cooking blossomed at a young age alongside her mom in the kitchen. She views food as a way to honor creativity, ancestors, plant and animal kin. She currently works as a private chef focusing on intimate event & retreat catering, postpartum meal services & community cooking classes through her business called The Flowering Hearth. Her culinary practice is rooted in animism and she views each kitchen tool, vessel and ingredient as alive and in alchemical co creation with the elements. She is inspired by weaving foods from her ancestry with PNW seasonality, herbs & foraged foods. Her passion lies in helping others explore their own food ways, stories and connection to land through eating and cooking and honoring food in a way that reminds us that food is Prayer, Ceremony and Medicina. Learn more about The Flowering Hearth here: https://www.thefloweringhearth.com

Melissa Meyer (she/her) is a Tsimshian Nation tribal citizen who belongs to the Eagle clan. She comes from a fishing village in northern British Columbia, Canada called Lax kw’alaams or “Island of Wild Roses.” She is mom to two teenagers and lives in Puyallup tribal territory in Tacoma, WA. Melissa has been blessed with the opportunity to steward a one-acre farm named after her village, Rose Island Farm. Melissa also currently serves the Nisqually Tribal Health Clinic as a Traditional Plant Medicine Practitioner. She has been a lifelong learner in Native plant and medicine ways and holds tightly to her responsibilities to pass on the traditional knowledge and lineages of care for lands, ancestral foodways, and embodied community care. Melissa enjoys being with beloved relatives in the form of friends, plant kin, her pet cat, and the many waterways woven throughout the PNW.