Margaret Roberts: Avid gardener who popularised the diverse uses of herbs

1937-2017

MARGARET Roberts, known as the first lady of herbs in South Africa, has died at the age of 79.

Roberts worked with zeal to spread the popularity of herbs among gardeners and others, including their use for medicinal purposes, cooking, cosmetics and aromatherapy.

She was born Margaret Joan Oosthuisen in 1937, and was educated at Brooklyn Primary School and Pretoria Girls’ High, where she was a prefect in matric.

After studying physiotherapy at the University of Pretoria and Pretorial General Hospital she practised at Johannesburg Hospital and then went into private practice, including at Rustenburg Hospital. There she started a modest mobile clinic which took medical supplies to farmworkers in the district who could not easily get to a hospital or clinic.

After marrying, she lived on a farm in the Magaliesberg area, where the hoofprints of cattle in the clay soil inspired her to take up pottery. The hobby grew into the Roberts Pottery and Craft Industry.

Her eldest child, Peter, suffered from asthma and this prompted her interest in herbal cures and remedies.

She already had a huge vegetable garden on the farm, growing heritage varieties including pumpkins, squash, beans, sweet potatoes and many maize varieties including popcorn, Indian corn and yellow maize.

She made her first TV programme because of the herb garden, and after writing a chapter of a gardening book for Keith Kirsten, she was asked by Jonathan Ball to write a herb book. Book of Herbs was published in 1983, and was followed LADY OF THE LAVENDER: Margaret Roberts wrote more than 40 books on plants by more than 40 books on herbs and related topics.

Roberts even wrote a book on Herbs For Animals for the use of veterinary students, and she grew herbs for vets. The most popular of her books were Healing Foods and Indigenous Healing Plants, published in 1985.

She broadcast widely on radio and TV, with her Friday morning programme Herb of the Week on Good Morning South Africa so popular that a professor of economics from a Cape university phoned her and asked her to move it to Saturday morning as she was the reason that South Africa was late for work on Fridays and this was affecting the economy.

During the 1990s she created a Margaret Roberts collection of products for Woolworths, a partnership that lasted for 25 years. When an old-fashioned rose was named after her in 1992, she included it in her rose range of products.

She imported seeds and books from the Herb Society in England, and later led herbal gardening tours to that country to study herb gardens, including the Royal Horticultural Society gardens of Kew and Wisley.

An early interest was the hobby of growing sprouts (germinated seeds and young plants or micro greens), which she called “windowsill gardening”: these included chickpeas, millet, sesame, chia, sorghum and teff. The micro greens included beetroot, sunflowers, lentils, kale, celery, mung beans, wheat and barley.

She became an expert in the medicinal uses of indigenous plants, and taught sangomas about using them and doing it in a sustainable way, leaving enough plants and seeds in the wild. She was regarded as a sangoma herself.

Mindful of her formal training and Hippocratic oath, Roberts regarded herbs and homeopathy as complementary — not a rival or replacement — to medicine.

She always advised people to consult their doctors about what remedies they proposed to take.

Roberts received a laureate award from the University of Pretoria in 2006, an award she regarded as her greatest

A professor asked her to move her radio programme so as not to make SA late for work Roberts regarded herbs and homeopathy as complementary to medicine

achievement. In return, she often lectured biology and botany students.

Thirty-five years ago she set up her second garden, the Margaret Roberts Herbal Centre in De Wildt, on the northern side of the Magaliesberg. The garden is rated as one of South Africa’s top 10, and is completely dedicated to organic farming and organic insecticides.

In 2000, South Africa’s first fire-proof seed bank was added to the centre, inspired by one Roberts saw in the Seychelles.

It is intended to conserve the seeds of her most important plants, and will be opened in 2025 and the plants regrown.

Roberts is survived by her son, Peter, and daughters, Sandra and Gail. — Andrew Unsworth