Garden Doctors

Photo by Paul Chibeba

Physic Gardens

• before there were the botanic gardens that we so know and love
• there were gardens of a different sort
• gardens that did not focus on the aesthetic nature of the plants
• rather on their healing powers
• medicinal gardens have been around since the times of Emperor Charlemagne
• the man who dominated Western Europe from the 5th to the 15th century
• so we’ve been using plants to take care of ourselves in an organized way for a long time

Both of these images are from the Chelsea Physic garden, the second oldest botanic garden in England, second only to the Oxford Botanic Garden.

• even the pious enjoyed this practice
• Pope Nicholas V used part of the Vatican grounds in in 1447 as reserved space for gardening and botanical teaching
• these two great leaders aside
• it was not always the higher ups establishing gardens
• in fact
• it was not even botanists who were responsible for the botanic garden precursors
• it was those in the medical field

Yet again, we have a convergence of sorts. Today, a doctor would hardly think of having an herbal garden for growing healing herbs for their patients, but in that time period, before the development of modern medicine, the plants were all they had. Apothecaries were everywhere and botanical knowledge was extremely valuable, as it could be the difference between life an death. Of course, the whole practice came with a lot of guess work, but that is the nature of science. Science does not look to prove, rather to improve. It is malleable and changeable as we relentlessly charge on into the future.