Maggie’s Herb Farm, St. Augustine, FL

September, 2024

Now, most of you know I’m a plant person. As in, I’m kind of obsessed with them. 🤣 My favorite kind of plant is one that has a use. Luckily my family either feels the same way or just humors me. 😉 We normally post about our favorite places we’ve been to and this is no exception.

Located just outside of St. Augustine, Maggie’s Herb Farm (owned by Mike & Dora Baker) has fast become one of our happy places and is well worth the drive. Their selection, friendliness, exceptional service & knowledge make any visit there an absolute delight. 🤩 They specialize in unusual plant varieties that are pesticide free and offer perennials, nectar plants, medicinal herbs, and seasonally fruiting plants.

This is one of the family owned businesses we love to support instead of a big box store. For sure not everyone who reads this will be able to go to St. Augustine for their plants, but we really want everyone to be aware of the different kinds of plants you can have in your yard that can be useful instead of just decorative and that a local nursery might have some recommendations on what can grow in your area. 🌱

Since we travel (a lot), we really want a yard that can be pretty much zero maintenance. Does that mean we go all rock or stone in the yard? Nope, definitely not for us. Our goal is to get rid of anything that needs to be maintained and replace it with something we don’t need to worry about. 🤔 We figured that would be pretty difficult, but with Mike & Dora’s help, we have a pretty good plan in place to get that done.

First off, we decided to do this in various steps instead of all at once. That way we can try what we like and go from there. We definitely wanted to make sure the plants we buy have a purpose. 🌿 For example, we grow Awapuhi (Shampoo Ginger) in multiple places in our yard. When the cones are ripe, we can use the liquid for shampoo and soap. It smells amazing and is incredibly gentle on our skin. It also doesn’t have any chemicals, so that’s a definite plus. You can find some videos we made on Awapuhi here: https://youtu.be/QztDN9DHUmg and https://youtube.com/shorts/BvRo96VekAc?feature=share

Awapuhi

We just love our Turk’s Cap bushes that we bought from Maggie’s a few years back. 🥀 The flowers taste like cucumbers and are very beautiful. This trip, we explained what we were looking for and Mike and Dora had some great recommendations. The Barbados Cherry bushes they suggested are so cool! They are fast growing and love where we planted them. They produce some colorful red cherries that are high in Vitamin C, Antioxidants, and can boost the immune system. They have a sweet-tart flavor that we are super excited to make jam with! 🍒

Barbados Cherry

We also bought a Moringa, which is high in antioxidants, protein, Vitamins A & C, iron, and is an anti-inflammatory. The Moringa grows foot long bean-like pods which have lots of health benefits in the edible seeds in the pod. The delicate shaped leaves look great in landscaping and also taste slightly peppery–similar to arugula. The white flowers taste like mushrooms! This plant is so cool and is considered a miracle tree! 🌳

A Mexican Tarragon, which has a delicious anise taste that I love to make tea from, somehow found it’s way into my wagon, lol. Dora also recommended a Butterfly Pea Vine since I love to make tea a/k/a infusions with fresh herbs and plants. ☕ Joe found an heirloom Datil Pepper bush. These are grown primarily in the St. Augustine region and are amazingly delicious! Thanks to Mike’s knowledge, we are hopeful to grow a large amount from this year’s crop. Joe makes an incredible datil pepper hot sauce! 🌶 Juliana decided we needed a Vicks Salve plant. 🌿 These are so neat! When you have congestion, you can boil a leaf or 2 in some water and by inhaling it, it helps break up the congestion. 🤧

Datil Pepper

Vicks Salve

There were quite a few other plants we brought home that day including Manihot, Lemon Marigold, African Potato Root, Garlic Chives, Yacon Root, and Purslane. All of the plants at Maggie’s were healthy, with a good root system that was ready for planting. 🌺

Maggie’s is our go-to place for all things wild and wonderful. 🌻 Dora has classes on Wednesdays during certain months of the year that she offers for people to learn about beneficial herbs, their care and unique uses. We purchased one of her books that has been super helpful to learn about the plants we bought. 📔 Since Dora is a locally celebrated artist, they also have Dora’s pottery and sculptures available for sale in addition to handmade crafts, honey, and jams made by other local artisans. 🎨

I’ll be sure to keep you updated on how the yard is coming along in future posts. We’ve been having fun exploring new flavors of our plants and the beauty they are providing in our yard. Step 1 of our yardscape conversion is complete, now on to Step 2! 🥳

We hope you are enjoying our travels! We’d love to welcome you to subscribe to our email list, Facebook, & YouTube channel. You can also share it with your friends, if you’d like. We added some videos on our YouTube channel to go along with the post: https://www.youtube.com/@TravelingwiththeTrapps

Thanks so much and stay tuned for more Traveling with the Trapps! 😀

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