About Us

Miss Anne's
Maypop

About Us

Maypop Community Herb Shop opened in 2011 by a collective of herbalists and is the first herb shop to open after Hurricane Katrina. For the last 6 years, the herb shop has been located in its’ second home on St Claude Avenue in the Bywater neighborhood of Bvlbancha, the city of New Orleans.

Maypop Community Herb Shop opened in 2011 by a collective of herbalists and is the first herb shop to open after Hurricane Katrina. For the last 6 years, the herb shop has been located in its’ second home on St Claude Avenue in the Bywater neighborhood of Bvlbancha, the city of New Orleans.

The Shop has become an Essential Business since the pandemic, which many people in the community rely on as their primary source of healthcare, and where doctors send their patients for plant-based equivalents to pharmaceutical interventions they would otherwise prescribe.

Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop continues to provide the largest selection of organic, bulk herbs and herbal extracts in the Gulf South along the Medicine Trail in South Louisiana. With over 180 bulk herbs, spices, green and black tea blends, a line of herbal oil extracts the Shop also features what Miss Anne describes as “Community-determined medicine”. Over 20 herbal extract blends and 18 herbal tea blends created to meet the need from the community for common herbal blends

Our Team

Anne posing in front of her store and smiling for the camera.

Anne White Hat

Anne White Hat is a Sicangu Lakota herbalist who’s been working with medicinal herbs and plants for over 25 years. With much gratitude, she was mentored by Indigenous Zapoteca midwife, curandera and Master Teacher Doña Enriqueta Contreras Contreras from Oaxaca, Mexico whom she brought to Sicangu Lakota territory to share her teachings and inspire our genetic and cultural memory about the importance of Indigenous herbalism in our communities. She also received mentorship and guidance from the late Marsha Gomez, Choctaw, and Indigenous and elder herbalists that she’s had the opportunity to work with along her journey in Indigenous herbalism.

White Hat is the mother of three and a member of the Aske Glupwipi Tiospaye of the Sicangu Lakota. She was born on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and raised in He Sapa, the Black Hills. She is a member of the 100 Horses Women’s Society and a member of the Indigenous Women’s Advisory Council for the L’eau Est La Vie – no Bayou Bridge pipeline resistance camp that held the line against the tail-end of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the prairies and swamps of south Louisiana. She is the lead plaintiff in White Hat vs Landry, the landmark case challenging the amendments to the state’s critical infrastructure law aimed at quelling pipeline resistance movements in the state, much like other efforts across the country.

Anne is a member of the Another Gulf is Possible collaborative which provided start-up support for her work with Delta Rootz an herbal medicine making collective of radical herbalists, first responders, activists & mutual aid folk, gardeners and plant nerds who desire to make community herbal medicine more user friendly and safe, honor sacred and precious plant medicine.

In late 2019, DR began organizing as a solidarity collective to support frontline movements andThen the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. While in city-wide lockdown, many mutual aid groups began forming and in March 2020 Delta Rootz sprang into action with a seasoned group of medicine makers, trained and experienced herbalists, a clinical herbalist, and a medical student, including a strong front of Indigenous herbalists who helped develop culturally sensitive formulations for our herbal Covid care packages.

Anne was the lead-coordinator for this mutual aid effort that evolved into community medicine making model to provide much-needed Covid care herbal medicine to support Indigenous-led mutual aid efforts across the country through COVID variant surges. These herbal medicines were developed through each variant in consultation with herbalists across the country who shared their own experiences with Covid as well as first-hand reports of community outbreaks, symptoms, community response and Delta Rootz’ participation in national and international forums focused on the global response through the integrative medicine lens.

Anne is joining the 2023 cohort of the Family/Clinical Herbalist Program at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism and looks forward to sharing her journey. At the end of this first of three years of study, she’ll receive a certificate of completion of the Family Herbalist program a comprehensive study of the arts and sciences of herbal medicine, botany, plant chemistry, energetic systems and human physiology. Her goal is to complete all three years and provide consultations through her herb shop.

Anne purchased Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop in January 2022 in her dream-fulfilling effort to brew and provide high quality, affordable herbal medicines for you.

Marina is sitting in a field outdoors and smiling at the camera.

Marina Sparagana

Marina Sparagana has been in love with and felt connected to plants her whole life. Her plant medicine practice of intuitive and care based herbalism began in childhood noticing and engaging with plants and flowers, and she was especially drawn to plant based medicine in her late teens as a way to gain autonomy over her health. She moved to New Orleans in 2014 and began studying with Phyllis D. Light at the

Appalachian Center of Natural Health, where she completed all three years of the program. She is a certified Wilderness First Responder with Sam Kaufman’s herbal-centric First Aid wilderness training. Marina believes in the power of plants, and the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy. She is very grateful to the care and healing plants have given her in her life, and sees plant-based medicine as an important tool for individual and community agency and empowerment. She strives to provide Queer friendly, body positive, consent-based care in her herbalism practice. She has had the privilege of working at Maypop Community Herb Shop since 2018.

Marcela is outdoors and looking intently at the camera.

Marcela Singleton

Marcela Singleton first learned about western herbalism from her mother. She is a gardener, artist, costumer, tarot reader, and mom. Originally from Los Angeles, she has lived in and loved her adopted home of New Orleans since 1997.
Justine is sitting on a bench outdoors and smiling for the camera.

Justine Diamond

Justine Diamond works behind the scenes at Maypop performing administrative and managerial duties. She has been in relationship with plants since she was a child and began studying herbalism informally when she joined the Maypop team in 2016. She completed the Reclaim Program at Samara School of Community Herbalism in 2019 and continues to learn and grow in her practice.

Justine also creates natural perfumes through her business, Elspeth’s Airs, which can be found in the shop. She is a certified aromatherapist and is available for consultations and custom products. Justine loves being in the world of plants and especially appreciates Maypop’s commitment to community and accessible medicine.

Ally is outdoors and smiling for the camera.

Ally

Ally is a student of traditional and allopathic medicine. They learn with plants and are currently a student of western biomedicine. She began to befriend plants in her youth and have found them to be an infinite source of joy and curiosity. Ally is grateful to their teachers – Batul True Heart, Janet Kent, Jen Stovall and Dave Meesters as well as all of the plants he has fallen in love with. They are especially grateful to the whole Delta Rootz crew and the nights of laughter and hauling buckets of honey. Ally hopes to continue to learn from plants to bring deeper healing and liberation to the world.
L’Oréal is smiling happily at the camera and taking a photograph.

L’Oréal Monique

L’Oréal Monique is a New Orleans native who has benefitted from traditional herbal medicine since her mother’s womb. Her first memory of preparing her own herbal infusion is at the age of 9 via her mother’s direction. She credits her mother for her knowledge of herbs and enthusiasm for natural and wholistic remedies. Armed with her knowledge from esteemed herbal practitioners the likes of Dr. Jethro Kloss and Michael Moore, she began exploring more traditional medicines and remedies which survived transAtlantic slavery.

Cate Alber

Cate (they/them or she/her) is a community and clinical herbalist in the 9th ward of New Orleans. She is fascinated by the relationship of plants and people and believes that by building a broad web of care we become stronger and can better navigate the world. Cate has worked with herbs for 16 years through formal training and self-study, and has offered consultations through her clinical practice (Homebody Herbs) for 6 years. In 2013 they studied aromatherapy with Cheryl Hoard in St. Louis. Three years later, Cate completed a holistic herbalist program at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine in Asheville. In 2018, they graduated from the clinical herbalism program at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. Cate has been living in New Orleans since 2019 and enjoys teaching about herbs, touching plants, spoiling her dog, singing, and baking. 
Cate smiling at camera behind flowers

Liz

Liz is a biologist and herbalist born and raised in Northern Mexico, where she started her relationship with plants as a newborn. The "curanderas" were always the first option for her family's physical and spiritual health. 

Her academic studies include a bachelor's in Biology that she completed between Mexico and Chile and also a couple of the programs in herbalism offered by Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine.

She has explored different ecosystems from Alaska to Patagonia, as well as a wide variety of subjects related to plants, including evolution, genetics and conservation, urbanism, herbal medicine, and farming. Her favorite things are foraging, playing drums, and making salves for her friends. 

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