ABOUT CAROLINE
Rooted in plants,
place + community
Community Herbalist · Permaculture Educator · Mother
THE PRACTICE
A deeply rooted, woven life.
My name is Caroline Riley. I'm a community herbalist, permaculture educator, gardener, medicine maker and founder of Mutable Earth Botanicals.
I've been gardening for as long as I can remember, growing up with my hands in the soil alongside my parents.
Becoming a mother at 23 changed the way I thought about how I wanted to live and raise my family. It led me more deeply into herbalism and permaculture and toward a life rooted in growing food, making medicine, caring for the places we live and sharing those practices with my children and community.
There is something both simple and profound about a deeply rooted, woven life. Growing food. Knowing the plants around us. Making medicine. Growing living soil. Gathering with people with our hands and hearts in the plants and soil.
These aren't separate parts of my life or work. They are woven.
Today, I live with my family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, growing food and medicine, teaching, writing and helping steward Green Song Farm.
After so many years of teaching what I knew well in Central Texas, it feels good to be a student of place again.
ROOTS
The Food Forest + Mutable Earth
For fifteen years, much of my life and work was rooted at Whole Life Learning Center in South Austin.
What began as pasture around the school grew into a diverse food forest and living classroom filled with fruit trees, medicinal plants, food, flowers, pollinators and people.
As the garden grew, we planted more and more medicinal plants.
Eventually, we were growing more medicine than we knew what to do with.
That abundance became Mutable Earth Botanicals.
In 2016, the apothecary found a home in a little green yurt tucked into the Food Forest. Plants growing just outside the door became tinctures, teas, oxymels, oils and seasonal remedies.
But Mutable Earth was never only about what was on the shelves. Hundreds of hands helped shape that garden. Children grew up in it. People came to plant, harvest, make medicine, learn, teach, share meals and spend time together.
Seed to remedy became seed to community.
COMMUNITY HERBALISM
Learn and grow together.
I believe in de-commoditizing community. Belonging isn't something you should have to purchase.
Community Herbalism Days grow from that belief. They are free gatherings in the Food Forest where we socialize with purpose, babies in tow, get our hands in the soil, meet medicinal plants, make medicine, and learn from and alongside one another.
You don't need to already know what you're doing. Curiosity and wonder are enough.
Community Herbalism is a practice, and I believe it can be a movement.
It is a practice of growing, harvesting, processing and transforming medicinal plants into remedies that go back out into the community. We learn basic propagation skills and share plants so that others can grow medicine gardens of their own.
The medicine moves outward. The plants do too. And so does the practice.
Today, Community Herbalism continues in the Food Forest with Jacqui Casarez Ramirez of Sacred Seed Botanicals—growing and changing in her hands, just as it should.
TEACHING
Sharing the practice.
Teaching has been woven through nearly every part of my work. I began working with children and over the years have taught people of all ages, including more than 1,000 adults through permaculture courses, herbalism programs, workshops and apprenticeships.
For now, that work continues through Abundant Ecosystems, my online course in permaculture and community herbalism, and one-on-one consultations to support people through their own design process.
BEGINNING AGAIN
A student of place.
In the summer of 2026, my family and I left Austin and moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina.
I brought years of practice with me, but not the assumption that what I learned in Central Texas could simply be transplanted here.
The seasons are different. The water is different. The plants are different. The soil is different.
I'm taking this year to let my herbalism practice emerge from my new life rather than forcing it into the shape it had before.
I'm growing and making medicine again, meeting the plants that live here and learning what thrives in our gardens and what grows wild around us. Across the road at Green Song Farm, I'm part of a seven-person project team beginning the long work of stewarding 64 acres of forest, pasture, water, orchard and farmland.
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