Rachel blends her background in community health, women’s health, medicinal herbs, and sustainable living practices to inspire and promote home-scale herbalism.  She created Backyard Botanics, a family herbal body care business in the Sierra Foothills, to offer high quality herbal self-care made with local ingredients. Her training includes years of self-study and practice working with herbs for home remedies; formal training programs with Donna D’Terra, Kathi Keville and Candis Cantin; and studying health and health care practices among traditional healers in Chiapas, Mexico.  She holds a master's degree in Health Psychology and worked many years as university instructor in women’s health and as a public health advocate for women and children. 

Commonweal Garden is familiar ground for Rachel — she lived and worked there for the first several years of its development as the Regenerative Design Institute. In these gardens, she learned to connect more deeply to the natural world, use the local plant life to nourish herself, offer herbal first aid to course participants, and create pure and effective herbal care for her family.