Hi, I'm Brenda Grate

I live on the Mani Peninsula in southern Greece, where rosemary grows wild on the hillsides. My husband and I recently moved into a house in our village with land enough for fruit trees, a proper garden, and several very contented cats.

I work with people who have health problems they can’t seem to solve. Often they’ve already been to doctors. Often they’re taking medication that isn’t working, or that has handed them a new problem on top of the old one. Most of them arrive tired.

Here I share herbal remedies, seasonal recipes, and essays, and I teach you how to make your own remedies and natural solutions for the home. I also see clients one to one. My first herbal book, The Mediterranean Herbalist: Stories and Herbal Remedies from Italy and Greece, comes out with Book Shelter in 2026.

It started long before I knew about herbalism

I was raised by a hippie mother from California who believed sugar came from the devil. She wasn’t far off the mark, but as a child I only knew that I wasn’t allowed to eat what my friends were eating.

I understood at nineteen.

I’d just had my first child when I developed hyperthyroidism. I was losing weight I couldn’t afford to lose and my heart raced all day long. My doctor gave me two options: radioactive iodine to destroy part of my thyroid, or medication for the rest of my life. Neither one sat right with me.

This was before you could search the internet for anything, so I went to the library.

What I found was kelp — a seaweed rich in natural iodine. The doctor wanted to give me radioactive iodine, so I thought, why not try the natural version first? I cut out coffee and simple carbohydrates, changed how I was eating, and took kelp every day.

One evening I took my baby daughter out for a walk, looked up at the stars, and said to myself: I have children who need me. I refuse to be sick. That decision carried me through the months when I had no idea whether any of it was working. I’ve never been able to dismiss what the mind does in healing.

It took a long time. Years later my family doctor sent me to an internist, worried that I’d done real damage by refusing conventional treatment. The internist ran a full battery of tests, then sat me down at his desk, baffled.

“I’ve never seen this before and can’t explain it. Thyroids don’t fix themselves. You are perfectly fine.”

I can’t tell you with certainty what did it. The kelp, the food, the rest, my own stubbornness, or something I’ll never know about. What I can tell you is what I did and what happened afterward — and that it set the direction of everything since.

Learning to trust the plants, and know their limits

In the years since, I’ve used herbal medicine to support myself through other health problems, including ones I’d been told had no option but medication.

I’ve come to believe that conventional and herbal medicine work best in harmony. I respect medical doctors and the years of training behind them. Neither they nor I have all the answers.

I haven’t needed to see a doctor in a long time, because I’ve learned to care for my body with food and herbs. But I know my limits. If something is beyond my scope, I’ll be the first to say so and I’ll tell you where to go instead. An herbalist who won’t say that isn’t one you should trust.

A winding path to the Mediterranean

My life has gone the way a root system goes, spreading out and heading in several directions at once.

I was born in Santa Rosa, California, grew up in Canada, and now live in Greece. I raised four children and mothered four stepchildren. I trained with Wild Rose Herbal College, and later as a holistic health coach. I’ve written four novels, and I paint the natural world.

Mugwort & Meadow today

Mugwort & Meadow is where all of it comes together: an herbal practice rooted in Mediterranean plant wisdom, drawing on the potency of Greek herbs and the practices that have been used on this peninsula for a very long time.

You’ll find remedies, seasonal recipes, essays, and an herb library here. Much of what I do is teaching you to make things yourself: tinctures, oils, syrups, teas, cleaning preparations, the ordinary useful things that used to be made at every kitchen table. You don’t need to buy what you can make.

If you’d like these in your inbox, my letters go out monthly and you’re welcome to join.

Working with me

People usually come to me after they’ve run out of things to try. Something won’t resolve. Or the medication isn’t working. Or it’s working on one thing and causing another.

They often expect me to hand them an herb.

We usually end up talking about sleep. About what they eat and how they eat it, what they’re carrying, what their days actually look like. I trained as a holistic health coach as well as an herbalist, and a consultation with me is coaching as much as it is plant medicine. Herbs are part of the work. They’re rarely all of it.

I won’t promise you a cure. What I will give you is time, close attention, a plan you can live with, and honesty about the point where you might need someone other than me.

Herbalism Diploma — Wild Rose College of Herbal Medicine

Holistic Health Coaching — Institute for Integrative Nutrition

Additional training: Reiki Master and Teacher, Life/Art Coaching