Anyone who loves birds finds great delight in spotting a dainty-yet-powerful hummingbird among colorful blooms. Famed organic gardener and herbalist Deb Soule will be at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens on Monday, July 23, to present an indoor and outdoor class that will teach gardeners how to attract hummingbirds to their yards.

This program from 2 to 3:30 p.m. will begin with a colorful slide show in the Bosarge Family Education Center, in which Soule will display a variety of flowers and herbs that attract hummingbirds. Then, during a walk in the gardens, she will discuss how to create hummingbird habitats using flowering plants that grow well in Maine. She will also share some stories from her time assisting a field biologist in Costa Rica studying Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds. 

Deb Soule began gardening and studying the medicinal uses of herbs more than 35 years ago while growing up in western Maine. In 1985 she founded Avena Botanicals Herbal Apothecary in Rockport, Maine. She tends a three-acre bio-dynamic herb garden that provides the majority of herbs for Avena’s herbal tinctures, teas, salves, and crèmes and is the author of The Woman’s Handbook of Healing Herbs. 

Tickets are $20 for members and $25 for nonmembers; reservations are required. To sign up, call 633-4333, ext. 101, go to www.MaineGardens.org, or stop by the Botanical Gardens off Barters Island Road in Boothbay.