MEET THE FOUNDER
Swati Starseed
Herbal Alchemist · Sensorial Experience Facilitator
I work with tea and botanicals to create experiences through scent, flavor, touch and conversation.
I’m Swati Starseed, founder of Herbal Love Alchemy.
I grew up in India, where tea was rarely just tea. It arrived with conversation, visitors & pauses in the day.
Tea is a potent portal of Connection.
It served as my doorway into botanicals.
What fascinated me was everything surrounding the cup—the scent of a botanical before it touched water, the way a spice could carry memory, the choices people made when presented with unfamiliar ingredients and the conversations that unfolded between people who had never met before.
That curiosity eventually became Herbal Love Alchemy.
WHY HERBAL ALCHEMY?
Botanicals can create atmosphere, awaken curiosity, carry culture & memory, become a ritual or simply remind us to be present.
My work explores them through taste, scent, touch, story and gathering.
Sometimes that becomes a tea.
Sometimes it becomes an aromatic composition.
Sometimes it becomes an entire room and the experience unfolding inside it.
BEYOND THE FAMILIAR
Much of my work is guided by a simple curiosity:
What happens when we experience something familiar differently?
A tea we thought we knew.
A botanical we have walked past a hundred times.
A person we have never met.
Even a part of ourselves that rarely gets invited into the room.
Through intimate gatherings and botanical sensorial experiences, Herbal Love Alchemy creates space for curiosity, choice, conversation and discovery.
There is no need to arrive knowing anything about tea or botanicals.
Curiosity is enough.
THE ART OF RECEIVING
Hospitality is at the heart of my work.
Not hospitality as performance or perfection, but the quieter art of making another person feel considered.
Received.
That might be through the way a cup is placed into someone's hands. The botanical chosen for them. A question asked at the right moment. A beautiful table. A little more time than the world usually allows.
My background in Ayurveda, design, food, travel and my life experiences all find their way into this work, I am equally influenced by the places, people, flavors and traditions I continue to encounter.
I am interested in looking at things that already exist with a new lens.
I remain curious about what can happen when different elements meet.
THE POWER OF EXPRESSION
Receiving is one part of the experience.
I am equally interested in what happens when people feel the freedom to choose, create and express themselves without needing to get it right.
At The Botanists Bar™, there is no perfect blend waiting to be discovered. You encounter the botanicals. You smell. You taste. You follow what draws you in. And you make something that is yours.
That Freedom of Choice is part of the Alchemy.
Which one are you drawn to?
HERBAL LOVE ALCHEMY
Today, Herbal Love Alchemy creates Botanical Sensorial Experiences through private tea sits, intimate gatherings, The Botanists Bar™, collaborations and other explorations of tea and botanicals.
Some are quiet.
Some are playful.
Some are unexpected.
But they share the same intention:
to experience tea, botanicals and perhaps ourselves, a little differently.
Welcome to Herbal Love Alchemy.
Come curious.