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Our favourite healing gardens in the UK

Sebastian Pole

I started Herbal Reality in 2020 to share traditional, scientific and practical insights into herbal medicine that informs a deeper understanding of the power of plants and clinical herbalism.

Along with my herbal studies and clinical practice, much of what I have learned about the intricacies of the herbal world has come from my time with Pukka Herbs that I co-founded in 2001.

I have travelled to hundreds of organic farms around the world pioneering sustainable herbal value chains, rigorous quality systems and a regenerative approach to business.

I now work with Earthsong Seeds, a medicinal seed project in the UK growing over 100 species to encourage the tradition of the self-empowered apothecary; growing and making health-remedies yourself. I am also a trustee of Earthsong Foundation and serve on the Advisory Board of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

I have written Ayurvedic Medicine: The Principles of Traditional Practice, A Pukka Life, and Cleanse, Nurture, Restore with Herbal Tea.

Medicinal plant gardens are a delightful way to immerse yourself in nature, and get to know natures medicine for yourself. Here we list our favourite gardens around the UK for you to visit.

Introduction

Our favourite healing gardens in the UK

We have always lived in close connection with the greatest healing garden of all – Nature. The forests, savannahs, mountains and meadows have long been the source of our healing medicines. Ethnobotanists now think around 30,000 of the 300,000 or so flowering plants have documented nutritional and therapeutic uses. Our ancestors knew Nature. As we started to cultivate food and gathered in cities, we needed to find a way to bring these traditionally wild healing plants to the burgeoning concentrations of people. And with this early trade there naturally arose a need to better understand and be able to identify the correct species, how to select the best quality, and in time how to scientifically assess the efficacy of the plants.

Early on in our agricultural adventure, we probably would have harvested those opportunistic medicinal plants that occurred naturally in the freshly turned land. Over time we established small herbal plots at the edges of our culinary fields. We have been taking herbs from the wild, cultivating them and trading them since time began.

Some of the earliest knowledge we have of cultivating therapeutic plants is from Mesopotamia and the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon where over 64 types of plants were grown from the milder fennel and roses to the powerful opium poppy. Also the Egyptians established herb gardens near their temples with frankincense, myrrh, mandrake and chamomile all featuring for the potent ability to heal wounds and soothe pain. Across China, India, the Americas, Arabia – in fact the whole world – our knowledge of how to identify and grow medicinal plants flourished until today about 500 species are grown commercially.

From around the Middle Ages dedicated Healing Gardens started to spring up in Europe; known first as the Garden of Simples (a ‘simple’ being a medicine made from one plant) and later, as interest in the global breadth of botanical diversity flourished, Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Gardens of today are really the legacy of these early Physic Gardens that were started in monasteries. The priests and monks, in line with their commitments to serve the poor and sick as well as care for their own community, appear as early centres of medicinal plant collections. Prior to them, we had largely been dependent on the knowledge of local wild harvesters – and for many species we still are today (of around 3000 species commonly in trade, some 75% come from the wild, amounting to a fifth of all volume).

Healing and Botanical Gardens hold a special connection with the local healers, plant collectors and sum total of the human knowledge we have gathered about our plant world. From Padua and Pisa in Italy, Jardin des Plantes in Paris, Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, The Linnaeus Garden in Sweden, Nanjing in China and beyond through the main cultural centres of the world, the Healing Garden thrive as centres of academic, artistic and spiritual upliftment.

Here in the UK, there are a host of fantastic botanical gardens and these are some of our favourites with a heritage in herbal medicine.

Whilst these Healing Gardens developed to grow medicinal herbal species, they are also a good example of how just being in Nature, even in its most managed and curated human-form, can lift your mood, calm your nervous system, and bring a moment of joy to your life.

If you have any favourite herb gardens do let us know at info@herbalreality.com. We’d love to visit them and share with our community too.

Sebastian Pole

I started Herbal Reality in 2020 to share traditional, scientific and practical insights into herbal medicine that informs a deeper understanding of the power of plants and clinical herbalism. Along... Read more

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