Wellness and healing are phrases that pop up often in herb-and-flower specialist Margaret Roberts’s conversation.
“It’s the most important ideal,” she says of wellness.
With her latest two books, 100 Edible and Healing Flowers – cultivating, restoring health (Random Struik, R230) and Herb Journal, available in English and Afrikaans (R120), she encourages enthusiasts to start writing.
The first book is an extension of an earlier one, but has information on many more flowers.
The Herb Journal, which encourages contemplation, also gives details on herbs and other plants.
“It’s not as extensive as in the Flowers though,” she notes.
Gardens have always been Roberts’s solace, but this book is also about using the naturalness in gardens and enhancing the magnificent properties by planting well.
“I can source any of the flowers in the book,” says Roberts who, when she loses a plant because of drought or storms, holds on to the seeds.
In the shadow of the Magaliesberg in the De Wildt environs, her herb centre, which started 30 years ago, has developed into a retreat for those who want an escape to the country.
“You can almost say herbs were my mother’s milk,” she says.
Her daughter Sandy’s daughter (Roberts’s grandchild), in her teens, is in training. “She’s the next generation,” says her mother.
What you have on the premises is everything they preach. Children are brought in to learn about plant life. “They don’t know the names any more,” says Roberts.
“I’m mad about flowers,” says the prolific author who, while launching two books, is searching for new ways to inform the public.
Make gardens that promote wellness, she encourages. Access to an exquisite garden will underline the beneficial traits. They are more than food for the soul. They offer respite from a world that rushes by too quickly.
“Flowers are so accessible,” she says. “They’re probably already in many gardens.”
One of her favourite sandwiches is rocket and nasturtium on bread with her home-made mayonnaise and a few slices of cucumber.
It’s not too tough a task.
We all try to have a few herbs in our garden, with some more elaborate than others. They are not difficult to grow and if you look at the cost of a few fresh ones, it saves time and money. Food also tastes that much better from your own garden.
“You don’t even need much space,” she says.
All that’s needed is a small patch of ground and sun.
If you can’t eat it, you can make tea, which will open up a whole new cupboard of flavours. “And herbal teas are some of the best painkillers,” she says.
She has a book on that too.
One of her latest endeavours is her lactose-free tissue salts range. The latest salts are available for pets and children, too.
She posts orders around the country.
It’s a stress-free way to cure, she believes.
It has been 26 years and
Sandy has learnt the tricks of the trade.
“My mom and I function like the left and right hands,” she says.
When she was four, she made her first batch of scented geranium scones – something she still serves.
”Rethink, replan and replant your garden,” says Roberts, ever the optimist.
“It could be a paradise of food and natural medicine as it was intended to be.”
Not only does Flowers include the recipes, all from Sandy’s kitchen, the author takes you step by step through the making of the perfect garden.
She spotlights various flowers, starting from the beginning of the alphabet with ajuga.
There’s the cultivation and medicinal uses, with this one supplying a rub for rheumatic and arthritic pains that has been used since the 1660s.
The leaves and flower heads are gathered in summer and turned into lotions to wash wounds, grazes and minor burns. That’s just one of many medicinal options.
Apart from a recipe for a butter bean stir-fry in which the flowering tops are used, the pretty mauve-blue flowers can also be added to salads and stir-fries or sprinkled over cakes, desserts and drinks.
Think of nasturtium salad vinegar or cheese dip, grilled aubergine salad with eggs and nasturtium flowers or orange blossom sago pudding served with iced tea with orange blossom sugar.
Or you could opt for almond pansy macaroons, strawberry and pansy granita, a pineapple sage drink, a dried safflower spicy mix, sugared violets, Hawthorn pancakes with lemon curd, a watermelon and mint dessert, a sage and pumpkin soup, stuffed avos with St John’s wort or a stevia flower rice pudding.
“I want people to have the book next to their beds. Let your finger slide down the page and where it opens, that’s what you need to read.”
That’s also the way to go about planting the flowers and trying the recipes. Before you know it, the edible garden is yours.
* For more details, visit www.margaretroberts.co.za