About Us
Our Story
We are a plant nursery run by Raven’s Roots Naturalist School in Twisp, WA. Raven’s Roots teaches permaculture, herbalism, wild foraging, medicinal plants, medicine making, mushroom ID and foraging, wilderness survival, wildlife tracking and behavior, fermentation, basketry and many other self reliance and naturalist skills. Raven’s Roots also runs an apothecary from it’s 5 acre farm called Wayside Botanicals. The apothecary grows and harvests all of it’s own medicinal plants and sells teas, extracts, salves, hyrdosols and more on it’s website (link is above).
The name 7 Layers comes from the natural way that plants are inclined to grow. If not mismanaged, natural systems will grow in the following 7 layers: tall trees, small trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous plants, ground covers and root zone. Often times, if we don’t fill certain layers in our gardens with desirable species, nature will pick for us. Hence, the idea behind this nursery is to give our customers access to truly functional and useful perennial plants that can be grown in these 7 layers together. In permaculture, this concept is utilized to grow food forests.
TYPES OF PLANTS THAT WE SELL:
We grow and sell perennial vegetables, medicinal, wildlife attracting and native plants from our farm in Whatcom county. We have grown all of the plants ourselves and have formed a deep connection with all of them. They have all been grown organically within a no-till, permaculture system and the majority of them are perennials, which overwinter well in NW Washington. If you’d like to learn more about us and our growing practices, you can sign up to our monthly mailing list at the bottom of this page.
Wel have over 120 species of plants available for sale and possibly even more. If you’d like to visit the nursery at another time during the week, please contact us at gabe@7layersnursery.com to make an appointment. We also are busy running a school (Raven’s Roots) and an apothecary (Wayside Botanicals) on our farm as well, so we will need at least 3 days notice for appointments.
Gabe Garms, Co-founder
Gabe co-founded the 7 Layers Nursery in late 2020 with Reisha Beck. He is also the co-founder and head instructor at Raven’s Roots Naturalist School (www.ravensroots.org).. He teaches permaculture, herbalism, wilderness survival, fermentation and bird language and behavior. For the last 5 years, he has operated the plant nursery under the school, but due to growth, it was time for the nursery to become it’s own business entity. Gabe is extremely passionate about growing perennial vegetable and medicinal plants and has been teaching permaculture for over 8 years.
Reisha Beck, Co-founder
Reisha co-founded the 7 Layers Nursery in late 2020 with Gabe Garms. She is the founder and operator of Wayside Botanicals(www.waysidebotanicals.com). She is also an instructor at Raven’s Roots Naturalist School (www.ravensroots.org). Snice 2017 She has been providing high quality fresh and dried, cultivated and wild crafted herbs to apothecaries and herbalists across the US. Reisha is a full-time mother, plant enthusiast and student of the natural world.
