Botanicals

I have been deeply involved with plants for most of my life. I find endless connections between plants pottery, and fermentation - the core of which is understanding and working with the alchemy of earth materials in the presence of water and fire. I began gathering wild plants and turning them into potions as a child. My first product was called Huckleberry Finn Water (Wildberry Lifesavers soaked in warm water). In 1978, a course at Penn State in Orienteering and Survival initiated a life long interest in foraging and the use of wild plants as medicine. Living in a tipi amidst Balsam Poplar trees in Kodiak, Alaska in 1981, I made my first botanical healing oil from the resinous buds of the trees. In 1993 I traveled to my ancestral home of Stropkov, Slovakia, looking for gravestones. I found those but also found an entire living family and discovered that I came from a long line of medicinal herbalists. These trips (which continue to this day) and the vibrant family of living descendants who are artists, teachers, and herbalists, inspired me to open Karen’s Botanicals in 2004, and to begin formally marketing the organic creams, lotions, toners, oils and medicinal herbal products that I had been making ever since. I dedicated the business to my great- great- aunt Zsuzsanna Palcso and her family. I continue to be inspired by the serendipity of this connection, and by the passions that bind the generations together. Read more about The Slovak Roots of Karen's Botanicals.