Our Visit to Margaret Roberts Herbal Centre

So yesterday (7th Sept) we drove out and spent the whole afternoon visiting Margaret Roberts’ place, and wow! I am so glad we finally went, what an amazing place, and what an amazing lady. An icon in alternative medicinal health therapies, so highly thought of and respected, yet absolutely down to earth with both feet on the ground. We knocked on her office door as complete strangers and were not met with an array of office personnel fronting and diverting us, there she was greeting us herself.

We talked for a few minutes, explaining to her that we were looking for a tamarind tree, and why and then promising us that she will go look if still has one, we let her go have a cup of tea and a rest as she had just stepped out of the lecture she had given that afternoon. We fully expected her to take at least half an hour and we really wouldn’t have minded waiting, so we went back to where we had our trolley and our other plants and browsed around having fun and talking with other like-minded people, but before we could wipe our eyes there she was walking out of the back-part where they are still cultivating and growing trees, with a tamarind tree for us. MargaretRoberts

 

We got to chatting again about all kinds of topics for at least an hour. What an amazing lady, and what an amazing effort she is putting out there. Every single plant is grown and cultivated right there by herself and the people that she has trained, everything is organic and non-GMO – she even has a seed-bank. There is the lecture hall, the shop where she has made soaps and all kinds of organic health goodies all natural, and little pillows and her books … oh she just finished another one, but it’s not published yet, so I’ll leave that as her surprise for you guys, personally I can’t wait until it’s published, I’ll be first in line to buy it. There is the cafeteria and tea-garden where you can get lunch, prepared right there from everything grown there. The fairy garden was closed because some kids had done some serious damage to a lot of the plants in there, which is really horrible and makes you ask a lot of questions about some parents, but the fairy gallery is still open, and all she asks is a donation that goes to the hospice. There are little trinkets to buy and of course her fairy forest book that she wrote for kids.

 

At the end of the day, we finally found Pixie’s Soapwort, and bought five of them :), well hey, give us a break, everywhere, and I do mean EVERYwhere else we’ve asked they look at us blankly and say “huh?”, seriously, you’d think that nurseries would know, but apparently, not! It went the same way with the tamarind tree, they kept telling us that we mean the tamarisk or something else and we’d tell them no, we actually mean the tamarind, they’d keep treating us like we don’t know what we’re talking about, until we’d show them on my phone’s browser in wikipedia, it’s actually tamariND and that we have it correct. She had both the Soapwort AND our Tamarind and she knew exactly what we were talking about when we asked, we got these amazing strawberries and some Pennywort, we got some Australian Teatree, Pixie wanted some Jasmines as well so we threw that in too, we grabbed two Stevia’s and a Dandelion. Then we added some soya bean seeds, 100% organic, because these days 80% of the world’s soya is GMO, and with Pixie and the kids being vega-fisha-tarians, we’ve been concerned about that.

 

We are planning on visiting again soon, we want to pick up some of her books, and more medicinal plants. Friends really, if you ever hummed and ha-’d whether or not you should pay her a visit, do yourself a favour, and go, you won’t be sorry. MargaretRoberts