A View Into A Medieval Garden: Herbs

Many medieval castles had their own garden in which grew a wide variety of plants and trees. Such gardens were designed and tended meticulously with great attention to detail. As such, a medieval garden yielded the most wonderful array of quality produce, all of which was destined for consumption and use by the lucky inhabitants of the castle and often their guests.

Beautifully designed medieval garden

Fruit and vegetables readily found their way into the medieval castle kitchen where they featured in many medieval recipes - some simple and some quite exotic ones! Pears stewed in red wine and spices was a good example of the latter. Apart from pears there were apples, quince and berry fruits.

Blackberries

Flowers were cultivated for a variety of uses in the castle. Some for decoration, some for consumption as part of a medieval salad and some for medicinal purposes.

The most abundant 'crop' in a medieval garden was usually herbs and that was because of the many, many ways in which medieval people used herbs. This is what we take a look at next.

Medieval Herbs

Herbs were amongst the most important plants in a medieval castle garden and were prized either for their taste or their medicinal properties. 

A typical, well planted medieval garden contained an incredible variety of herbs, most of which are still popular today. The difference back in medieval times, especially medieval England and France, was that herbs were used to a greater extent and many people had a good general knowledge of herbs and how best to use them.

Let's take a look at some medieval herbs which were popular for their medicinal uses, starting with one that many people many have never even heard of!

Agrimony
Used in medieval times for the treatment of stomach problems

Agrimony in flower

Medieval herbs with names that are a little more familiar to people today:

Angelica
Medieval use: For the digestive system

Borage
Medieval use: For the stomach and chest

Dittany
Medieval use: Good for poultices

Dittany

Flax
Medieval use: To stimulate appetite

Sage
Medieval use: To treat colds

St John's Wort
Medieval use: To help with burns and bruising

The list of herbs from the medieval era is a long one and there are some great resources for anyone who is interested in learning more about the general subject of medieval gardening. Here is a great example - a medieval herbs list which explains the variety of uses and gives an A-Z of some of the most commonly used herbs from medieval England and France.

Medieval Garden Reading Resources

Medieval Gardens (An introduction to the role of medieval gardens in England and France courtesy of Medieval-Recipes.com)

Plants In Medieval Art (Metropolitan Musem Of Art - The Cloisters Museum and Gardens)

Trees Of Medieval England (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford)

The above resources are just a sample of the wealth of information that exists and has been published to date. There are many more but these particular 3 were chosen because they exemplify the scope of the subject of medieval gardens as a whole. Hopefully, you will find something of interest there :) 

Medieval Music

Medieval life had many facets and medieval castle life in particular conjurs up many vivid pictures in our imagination. Here is one such picture .... a medieval knight in his castle hosting medieval banquets on special occasions throughout the year with medieval jesters and medieval music for entertainment. What a colourful scene!

First of all, there's the food to consider. Vegetables and medieval herbs (such as rosemary and sage) grown in the castle's own medieval garden; meat from locally farmed cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens and fish from the local rivers running through the castle estate.

Secondly, the entertainment. A medieval jester was an all-rounder with a variety of skills - he had to be to survive!

Thirdly, the music. Nothing like what we know as musical entertainment today, medieval music was reliant upon the skills of the singer/player and in a musical troupe there would often be a fiddle and/or a horn player. Here are photographs of modern-day copies of what these 2 medieval instruments looked like.

A Medieval Garden

One of the most fascinating aspects of medieval castle life is what people ate and drank. Life was very different then to now and most people today have simply no idea what it took to source and prepare a daily meal. 

 The castle owners, of course, had plenty of servants to rely on but to help them have access to a wide variety of food, they often had a medieval garden within the castle grounds. 

Medieval gardens were usually a mixture of vegetables, herbs and flowers with the majority being used in cooking but some, particularly the herbs, being used for medicinal purposes. 

Here is a photograph of a medieval garden in France which we visited recently. It is set within the grounds of a medieval castle - a medieval donjon in fact. 

 

One of the 16 sections of the garden

Walking in the shade under a canopy of vines, the air was filled with the sweet aroma of medieval herbs such as rosemary, hissup, purslane and mace .... simply wonderful!