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I would propose a few things for herbalism stuff.

First of all, herbalists should be able to make all of the appropriate treat materials, and they should be able to string them up thematically. Maybe new crafting style with a few different (new) herbs combined for each.

Then I'd also make it so all of the herbs came in a raw, ingestable form, some of which may not work. And there would be crafting recipes to turn each of them into ingestable teas, dried smokables, applyable salves, and inhalable smelling salts. The strength and duration of each form might be different. Maybe some options wouldn't be available for some that didn't make sense. And all of these should be toolable for thematic stringing.

Eating should also work for ingesting, and appraising herbals should be able to tell you what they have in them, possibly with an herbalism skill check. You should be able force someone restrained or unconscious to ingest, apply or inhale. They shouldn't generally be able to be forced on people in any sort of combative manner unless you already have control over the person. That doesn't make sense for herbs.

For herb affect tweaks, I'd give herbs affects when you take them. For quick-acting purposes, like a sudden burst of energy when you take some coamjar, the affect would allow you to not get the bonus again while it's in effect. So there's no spamming yourself full of floleaf to feel good as new again; just one bump up, and after that you feel a bit ill, having taken too much of it. For longer term affects, such as ridding someone of blindness or corpse rot, the result would instead go in when the affect wears off. This prevents the herb from suddenly being "Poof! I'm better!" but instead more of a curative, long-acting thing that you gradually start to get better. More realstic for what herbs should be thematically, and less magical.

Now, for growing herbs!

Let's say each herbgarden room can hold a certain number of herb plants, perhaps 5 or 10.

And each herb plant will sit in the room, unable to be picked up, and have a number of qualities. How long since it's been tended to, if it has herbs for the plucking. You could assess each herb plant and get any idea for these things, as an herbalist.

You would generally want to keep each plant tended every day, and you would be able to harvest from it every day. Perhaps the tending would require some small expense (possibly craftable) like mulch, or instruments like pruning shears. As long as the plant is tended, it would refresh being harvestable, but if it hasn't been tended, it may be a day before it can be harvested again, and if it isn't tended for several weeks, it may die. Maybe if it's been regularly tended for several weeks, you could get a bit more out of it with one harvest.

New plants could be acquired as seeds or seedlings from a store, and it would be a little while before it was harvestable. Or maybe a large portion of the herb could be gone over and made useless to collect seeds from it. Maybe seeds would be something that could foragable wild at high skill level - there's still a limit on how many plants you could grow in one garden.

It could possibly even be a fun system if there were plants that required little or no herbalism skill, and ladies could have their flower gardens which they tend to. Or hire gardeners to tend to. Maybe some plants that don't produce things, but are just pretty.

You could even go further on the tending and have different things that it might need each day - weeding one day, watering another, a bit of mulch, some pruning. Either as random things or different qualities to keep track of.

Most muds have the ability for items to repop randomly throughout a given area type. I'd like to see wild-grown herbs present in the game. For example, you're travelling through the green areas out the west gate and there are smatterings of random herbs throughout the outdoor spaces.

Based on an herbalist's skill they should have a chance (roll) to identify the herb on sight.

Based on a plant/tend/transplant/harvest skill (maybe a separate wildcrafting skill to encompass them all) they should be able to do those actions when they find the herb.

I'd put a separate skill or command in to concoct (produce) the various salves, poisons, tinctures, etc.

I'd like to see maybe 25-30 herbs so that we have an herb for each of many various diseases (floleaf for corpse rot, elderberry for flu, white willow for headaches (make headaches random), etc plus unique, rarer ones for effects (strength, mattack resistance, see hidden or even secret, etc)

I'd also like to see negative effects that go along with the positive (white willow cures your headache, but drinking too much causes the blood to thin and you bleed from injuries faster, etc)

I'd be more than happy to write up names / positive & negative effects / skill level required / etc specs for them all if needed.

Ric