Rooted in the Yukon: How Herbalist Sylvie Gewehr Built Wildwood Spirit

By Lael Lund

In a small kitchen in Haines Junction, surrounded by jars of dried plants and amber bottles lined neatly on shelves, Sylvie Gewehr is quietly reshaping what a business can look like in the Yukon. Through Wildwood Spirit, her herbal business, she crafts teas, tinctures, salves, plant walks, workshops, and one-on-one consultations that invite people into deeper relationship with the plants around them.

“It’s not just about products,” she says. “I’m doing it for the plants, mostly. I really believe that they can help us feel better, but also be better humans.”

From Europe to Haines Junction

Sylvie grew up in Europe and trained in biology and plant ecology. Herbalism has been part of her life since her teens, even if she didn’t see it as a career for a long time.

“I started when I was a teenager,” she recalls. “I was already making tinctures… which really worried my parents.”

It wasn’t until five or six years ago that she began to consider that herbalism could be a profession. Interestingly, her first step into entrepreneurship wasn’t through plants at all. In 2017, “out of necessity,” she started a bookkeeping and tax preparation business. That work paid the bills and gave her a practical foundation.

“The bookkeeping business is what gave me the confidence to start all the other businesses,” she says. “It taught me a lot… but also gave me the confidence that I could be self-employed.”

A Pandemic Turning Point

In 2020, something shifted. When many herbal schools moved online, Sylvie realized she could finally access training without leaving the Yukon.

“All of a sudden, a lot of herbal schools moved their programs online,” she explains. “I decided… that was my chance.”

A teacher encouraged students to actively work with plants—making blends and preparations, learning through doing. Sylvie shared her creations with a friend, who invited her to offer a few products at an open house at a local gallery.

“I did, and it was really well received,” she says. “That was what encouraged me to really take the step to start my business.”

In early 2021, Wildwood Spirit was born.

Balancing Ledgers and Leaves

Today, Sylvie runs three interconnected businesses: bookkeeping and tax preparation (her financial backbone), Wildwood Spirit, and The North Within—a collaboration with pyrography artist Alida Thomas that creates plant oracle and learning cards featuring local plants and burned-wood artwork.

Most days start with hours of finance work, then shift into plant-based work after lunch: making preparations, tending gardens, wild-crafting, preparing workshops, and writing card content. But switching from high-stress bookkeeping into a grounded, people-centered herbal practice is a real challenge.

“Sometimes being in the left side of the brain a lot… with finances, it can be a bit high stress,” she says. “It can completely kill the creative energy that I need for the other part of the day.”

Local First, Not “Scale at All Costs”

Wildwood Spirit is intentionally local. Sylvie sells at markets in Haines Junction and Whitehorse, offers plant walks and workshops, and stocks select Yukon shops. From the beginning, she decided she would not market her herbal products outside the Yukon.

“Though we have a lot of nature, it’s not a lush nature,” she says. “It takes so much for the plants to grow here.”

Instead, The North Within became her way to share Yukon plant wisdom more widely without putting pressure on local ecosystems. Subscribers receive two cards about one plant each month—one focused on herbal and wild-crafting information, the other offering an oracle-style message paired with Alida’s artwork.

“We live in a fast-paced world where everybody just wants everything right away,” Sylvie says. “We wanted people to really have the time to integrate.”

What the Work Is Really About

At its heart, Sylvie’s work is about bringing plants back into everyday life and rebuilding practical knowledge many communities have lost.

“A few hundred years ago, everybody practiced herbalism,” she explains. “We’ve all but lost that basic knowledge to help ourselves.”

In workshops, she encourages people to trust their instincts and notice what they’re drawn to.

“If you systematically grab the rosemary bottle,” she says, “it’s because there’s something going on with you and rosemary… Just trust that.”

In consultations, she avoids treating herbs like quick fixes. She looks at the larger picture—physical, emotional, and energetic—and sees plants as uniquely suited to that kind of whole-person support.

“That’s where the plants really shine compared to pills,” she says. “We can work on all of that with the plants.”

Redefining Success

Sylvie is clear that she doesn’t want growth to come at the expense of her values. She avoids over-harvesting, doesn’t want to compete aggressively, and believes in collaboration.

“I’m for cooperation,” she says. “Everybody has something unique to contribute.”

At the same time, she’s honest about the tension: to keep doing this work, her plant-based businesses need to be financially sustainable.

“If I’m not earning any money with my businesses, I can’t run them,” she says. “And therefore I’m also not bringing the plants into people’s lives.”

For Wildwood Spirit and The North Within, success is increasingly measured by reach and impact: how many people feel supported, learn something new, or find a plant ally when they need it most.

She remembers a day when she was seriously considering quitting product-making because it didn’t feel sustainable. Then, by chance, she overheard someone describing how one of her products had helped a long-standing health issue.

“That was really… on a day when I was thinking that maybe I should just give up,” she says.

Lessons for Small-Town Dreamers

Looking back, Sylvie wishes she’d realized sooner that she didn’t have to do it all alone.

“It took me years to realize there was a big community in the Yukon around business owners… and so much help,” she reflects.

Her advice for someone in a small Yukon town with a big idea is simple: talk to other business owners, learn from people with similar businesses, and remember that staying local sometimes means being versatile—offering a mix of products and services.

Sylvie’s journey is a reminder that success doesn’t have to look like “worldwide domination.” It can look like a neighbour who sleeps better because of a tea blend, a workshop participant who starts noticing plants differently, or a small envelope arriving in someone’s mailbox at exactly the right time.

“If people had more of this in their lives,” she says, “knew how to help themselves with plants, that would just contribute a lot to the health problems we have in general.”