This is an interesting place for South Florida. I had an herb store that I LOVED in Austin. It was a magical, wonderful place. It was in this old vine covered house with a hippy vibe. Their selection was excellent. You can read my review here - http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-herb-bar-austin?hrid=zTpEKvtmOLSlwJfrGTy2Ng. However, even Whole Foods carried bulk herbs and spices in Austin. You also had Natural Grocers were you could buy pre-packaged bulk herbs. There is EZ Herbs, an extremely knowledgeable herbalist who makes excellent herbal products. You have the innovative Herbalogic blending western and eastern herbal medicine. In other words, it wasn't too hard to pick up your favorite herbs or herbal products and learn about them as well.
Here it has been a little harder to find bulk herbs and to learn about them or find herbal products. (Okay, with the herbal products, we are talking where I look at the ingredients and say "I know where they are going" or "interesting." Herbal products that I can't easily just make myself for cheaper. Value added products for someone already into herbal medicine). Slowly, though, and carefully, I am finding my way. I found Your Big Picture Cafe which has a wonderful vibe to it as well. (http://www.yelp.com/biz/your-big-picture-cafe-davie-2). They have some bulk herbs and other herbal products, and the people there are so cool. I found the Green Wizard who teaches affordable, excellent herb classes. I found the South Florida Branch of the Florida School of Holistic Living (which I haven't been able to check out yet) which gives herbal classes.
So now in my search and digging, I found The Herbal Gardens. I e-mailed the contact because it is also an online store. She was helpful and e-mailed back about the actual storefront. Their hours were approachable, the location central, and I was excited to set aside time to visit it.
It has a VERY different feel from the other places I have been too. First of all, this is in Lauderhill. It's not exactly the part of town I would usually go to. Even during the day, you see security guards making the rounds of the Lauderhill "Mall" (looked kind of like a strip mall) where it is located. There were a ton of people milling around the nearby bus stop.
But you step inside, and it is an oasis of herbal medicine products. A clerk at the back of the store welcomed me in a friendly tone. They had a lot of unusual products. They had a wide selection of pre-packaged bulk herbs, even the less widely known ones. They have pre-packaged herbal pills arranged in alphabetical order in baggies. They also had herbal formulas for different ailments. I pulled several off the shelves to read the ingredients, and I was impressed with the formulas. They also had an interesting array of herbal products. I saw some I knew and some that were surprisingly new to me that looked intriguing. Overall, there was a lot that was impressive.
I almost don't want to highlight the negatives because I want to be supportive of what is so hard to find here in South Florida and also supportive of the obvious excellent and rare knowledge behind what they have on their shelves. But the negatives would be that it looked like some of their stock had been sitting on the shelves a very long time. I could totally be wrong about that but that is just my impression. The other thing that kind of bothered me is the sizes of the bulk herbs was not done by weight which is usually the way herbs are sold. It was done by baggie size. It's hard for me to get a grip on prizing (if it is comparable to other stores) with the sizing. Also, herbs can vary dramatically on the amount you get for a certain weight. They might totally have this all figured out with their pricing, but it just personally bothered me.
I don't know that I will be going here on a regular basis, but it definitely was an interesting experience. read more
