Have You Herbed?

In the Eastern Cape village of Bathurst there’s a bunch of ladies bottling health, happiness and herbs

- Marion Whitehead

When I drive through the village of Bathurst on the R67 outside Port Alfred, it’s hard to resist pulling in at the eye-catching Two Sages Health & Gift Shop. Owner Marcel Pullen shares the building with the Richard Pullen Studio & Gallery, and the husband-and-wife team presents a delightful store front in this laid-back rural settlement on the Eastern Cape’s Sunshine Coast.

Richard’s ceramics draw people inside, where they can watch him at work and engage the master potter in conversation. But they inevitably drift into the treasure trove that is Marcel’s shop, where she sells everything uplifting, from Tibetan prayer flags and incense, to herbal teas and her own range of aromatherapy body-care products.

“I was a city girl who had studied aromatherapy, and then came to Bathurst with Richard,” says Marcel. “Richard’s mom Ethel had a herb nursery and I started working with her, watering the plants and maintaining them, so I met them in a different manner. In the flesh, so to speak.”

It let Marcel see her aromatherapy training in a new light, and her interest in vibrational medicine – using the living energy of plants, crystals, plants, food, sunshine – blossomed along with the herbs.

When Ethel sold the nursery, the two women started a new venture and called their shop Two Sages, referencing an old Celtic tale of youth renewing traditional knowledge. And they combined their knowledge to produce the Two Sages range of body-care products that includes bath salts, shower gels, aromatherapy sprays, creams and lotions in an aqueous cream base enriched with cold-pressed jojoba oil and essential oils.