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Herbal Healing Garden - new for 2010

Our garden team are busy preparing the ground for the new gardens, whilst researching the vast knowledge of herbal healing from all cultures and stretching back in recorded history over 4000 years. This ancient wisdom was handed down from the Egyptians to the Greeks, then to the Romans, eventually passing through the centuries to the Tudors and Elizabethans who would have had a productive physic garden at Sudeley to provide the household with cooking and medicinal plants.  Herbs remained necessary and popular throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, until they were somewhat pushed underground as medical science started to take over by evolving synthetic substitutes for many of the medicinal properties previously derived from plants.

At Sudeley, as well as in most country gardens, some of the best known herbs for healing grow naturally or ornamentally. Lavender, beloved of bees, is already used extensively in herbalism and aromatherapy and its essential oil has valuable antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. Comfrey was much grown in the herb gardens of monasteries and is particularly renowned for its use in medicine, through which it acquired its other name of ‘knit-bone’. Ointment from garden marigolds has become a valuable skin treatment. The popular salad leaf rocket was an early form of anaesthetic – the Romans used both the leaves and the seeds and the Elizabethans were also extremely partial to it. The list goes on and on and opens the whole awe inspiring realisation of the wisdom and generosity of our natural world.

Expertise is required to extract and prepare the healing products from plants which also need to undergo thorough trials for certification. Lady Ashcombe is working with a professional group in developing a small range of herbal creams, exclusive to Sudeley, based on the latest research as well as traditional recipes and methods. These products will soon be available from our Visitor Centre shop and on the Sudeley website.

Photography: Andrew Grant Reed