When a bit of wellness support is in order, many folks reach for a bottle of their favorite Mountain Rose Herbs syrup or elixir. There’s a lot of plant goodness, history, and love packed into each bottle of the botanical-infused syrups and elixirs that are handcrafted by our team in Eugene, Oregon, and we’d like to offer you a peek behind the scenes of how we mix up each magical bottle!

Ayurveda is probably the oldest continuing health system on the planet. With a tradition going back thousands of years, Ayurveda offers a framework for understanding the body and how to best support its quest for balance. In the Ayurvedic tradition of health care, mind, body, and spirit are inextricably entwined.

Here at Mountain Rose Herbs, we understand that the modern commercialization of Mother’s Day sometimes makes it easy to forget that this holiday is rooted in age-old celebrations from around the world. One of the most ancient “mother holidays” was a festival held by the Greeks in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods. At dawn, people made offerings of cakes, drinks, and flowers in her honor. Other celebrations, like the sixteenth century “Mothering Sunday,” evolved over the centuries to become a day in which grown children visited home and little ones picked flowers for their mothers. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

My family loves fruity vinegars. We use them multiple times a week in vinaigrettes, marinades, barbecue sauces, sipping vinegars, and shrub cocktails.

Albania's mountains and valleys teem with rich botanical bounty. Mountain Rose Herbs and United Plant Savers visited its fecund countryside at the peak of the autumn harvest to meet the farmers and wildharvesters who help bring culinary apothecary herbs and fruits to plant lovers across the world (like the ripe and ready hawthorn berries above!).

Since 2013, Mountain Rose Herbs has hosted Free Herbalism Project, a free biennial, community event located in our hometown of Eugene, OR. Each event, we host two experts in the field of herbalism, and these inspiring instructors go in-depth on any number of botanically inspired topics. Past presenters have included Rosemary Gladstar, Dr. Tieraona Low Dog, Guido Masé, jim mcdonald, and many more!

Herbal sprinkles are a quick and easy DIY project that will help you fit more healthful herbs into your meals. Instead of having your spices tucked away in the cabinet, keep a few versatile blends on your table, and you’ll find that eating herbs at every meal is easy—when they are right in front of you, you can’t help but use them! Pretty soon, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without such a pleasing array of spices at your fingertips to liven up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

Books are wonderful resources to begin exploring herbalism and can also enrich an already healthy practice or study regimen. As you might guess, here at Mountain Rose Herbs, we have some favorite titles. Not only do these top herbalism books provide many insightful and educated viewpoints, but they also offer recipes, stories, and massive compilations of the many ways to use healthful plants. While many books will share some similar themes, each author brings their own unique viewpoints and experiences to enlighten and inspire. Personally, I can never have enough reference books around!

When October rolls around each year, I start paying attention to the hawthorn berries ripening on the tree in my front yard. Once they're ready, I harvest them to make my annual winter solstice hawthorn elixir to give to friends and family. Hawthorn is known to support cardiovascular health*. My recipe changes a bit every year, but three of the ingredients remain consistent: freshly picked hawthorn berries, raw, local honey, and brandy.

As a parent, I found an enormous amount of joy in watching my babies develop and grow. Teething, however, was not one of the happy times. Fussy, cranky, drooling, tearful babies rend a parent’s heart and stretch everyone’s patience. There is nothing worse than feeling helpless while your child suffers.

What is AHPA?

AHPA (the American Herbal Products Association) is a nonprofit organization made up of over 350 herbal businesses who want to promote the responsible commerce of herbal products. In other words, AHPA is a group of behind-the-scenes herbal experts and enthusiasts who put their companies’ competitive goals aside to work together to make sure that the herbal products available to you online and in stores continue to be safe and healthful.