The next time you have dry skin, acne, a rash or a bad hair day, don’t go to some chain pharmacy and pay top dollar for bottles of unpronounceable chemicals. Instead, check out Mother Green’s Boutique, a new natural-products storefront in the Concord Community Arts Center on Thorndike Street.
If you’re Instagram savvy, you may recognize the Mother Green’s Boutique name. The business existed online only (mostly through Instagram) for about three years before the physical shop opened up in December, said owner Hayla Henson.
“I really started it so I could stay home with my daughter,” Henson said of her business. In the beginning, when all sales were done online, Henson’s home was her workshop. She’d make all of her products at her house and mail them out as needed.
The products she makes are all made with natural ingredients such as sea salt, lavender, organic tea, coffee, rosemary and, most importantly, hemp oil. This is the key ingredient to most of her products.
Henson gets her supplies from an online apothecary, “but I would like to grow a lot of the things myself,” she said. After all, some of these things get pretty expensive.
Henson is a proponent of the healing and functional benefits hemp and its oil provide, and she even hands out strips of paper (hemp paper, of course) that has a fun fact about hemp written on it to every customer.
During our interview, she whipped up a batch of Anti-Gravi-Tea scrub so we could see the process, and it was actually quite simple. A 5-gallon plastic bucket about a third of the way full of Dead Sea salt. A generous pour of the dark-green hemp oil. One bag’s worth of green tea. Vigorous mixing.
And voila, a pouch of Anti-Gravi-Tea was born.
Her website, themothergreenway.com, is full of testimonials from people who have seen great results using her products.
“Haven’t had a pimple in three months,” one follower wrote. Another mentioned that her son had a rash on his back due to a food allergy and that it cleared up within 10 minutes of using the Anti-Gravi-Tea scrub. Yet another said, “I loved the hemp coffee scrub so much! My face was so soft afterwards and so soft!”
Henson sees a lot of other benefits of hemp, too, even if she doesn’t necessarily have the means to produce things other than body products.
“If only we would replace tree paper with hemp paper,” Henson said, noting that hemp grows much quicker and easier than trees do.
She decided to open a shop in the first place, she said, because she wanted another outlet to help support some crafters and artists she knows – her shop sells her own products as well as some items made by a handful of other artisans and artists. You can browse decorative crystals/jewels, hats, necklaces, bracelets, pendants – even original paintings – all made by local artists, who get a slice of the profits.
Another reason was that she was getting a little too popular to keep working out of the house.
“I have a lot of local customers, and I didn’t want people to come to my house,” she said.
Henson is still kind of getting settled into her new digs, but she already has plans for some events in the near future. She’s setting up a girls’ night for Feb. 11, in which ladies will come in for a foot bath, a makeup session and some wine.
Check the shop’s website or Instagram (instagram.com/mothergreensboutique) to stay up to date on events and products.
