Designing the Library of Medicinal Plants

The women’s pages of the Co-operative Journal in the Co-operative Society Archive at Holly House, Manchester contain recipes for health care remedies using everyday garden herbs prior to the founding of the NHS. Herbal remedies were actively used as preventative medicine, first aid and as a means of self help to try to avoid having to pay to see a doctor. The knowledge of plants was shared between communities and cultures. My home garden is devoted to culinary and medicinal herbs, which overflow into my allotment, having had an ongoing interest in herbalism.

My involvement with Feast and Fallowfield Secret Garden began by seeing a call out for an artist to work with the community to support a growing Library of Medicinal Plants. The group of gardeners, community activists, ecologists, musicians, builders, writers and dreamers who were involved in the garden invited those interested in applying to visit. It was autumn 2021 when people were gradually emerging from the Covid pandemic, the days drawing in, the afternoon sun low in the sky. The story of the garden was that the land had once been a play area and tennis court at the back of a council housing estate which fell into disuse. In 2011 a group of people in the neighbourhood applied for grants to transform the area into a community garden. I have travelled along the main roads around this hidden space by car, bus, bicycle and on foot for around forty years without ever knowing of its existence. When I entered, the traffic noises of the main road faded and the city vanished; the garden quickly became a magical, atmospheric space with echoes back to the famous Frances Hodgson Burnett story ‘The Secret Garden’ written in 1911 which I was given as a child one birthday.

The area where the group envisaged the medicinal beds taking shape was roughly in the centre of the space, the site of the composting toilet and bonfire. The ground was uneven, with rough grass and wildflowers. The garden volunteers had identified the many herbs and medicinal trees growing across the garden site and we worked together to put a ‘call out’ for donations of herb plants around the neighbourhood. The Library of Medicinal Plants would provide a focus for workshops with herbalists and foragers and a space for people to make simple herbal teas and balms to support their health and wellbeing. The hope is that this Herbal Medicine Garden will form a network with others in the North West to share plants, recipes and knowledge.

Responding to the medicinal uses of the existing plants across the garden, I initially planned the beds to be shaped in the form of the different organs of the body, with the herbs that help those organs planted within their borders. However, translated to actual ground the shapes would have looked too segregated or fragmented, each isolated from the other. Such segregation felt too simplistic in relation to the intricacies of herbal medicine. Each herb can support several systems of the body depending on the needs of the individual. There is no isolation of one organ from another, one system from another - mind and body, physical and emotional, all are working in relation to each other, an interconnected web. As such the beds take their shapes from organic forms, signifiers of growth and the interwoven plant and animal life. They echo an unfurling fern frond, a leaf, a seed pod and a seed.

Formed with minimal intervention, using materials that were found stored in different parts of the garden, and moving and rearranging some of the structures (the compost toilet and bonfire storage) to open up the space, the design took shape. working with the undulating, uneven ground the fern frond, seed pod and seed designs became visible in the shaped edges of the beds populating the newly open space. 

Demarcated by low tiles, stones and bricks laid slantwise the design is underdetermined rather than hard landscaped, allowing for change and development over time. The organic unfolding of the beds is in contrast to the neat geometric layout and raised planters of the vegetable garden.The vegetable beds are designed for annual crops to provide food requiring a more intensive and deliberately cultivated approach. A wilder and nature oriented approach can allow the herb beds to unfurl and develop at their own pace. The gardeners intervention here is about getting to know the enthusiastic plants that need curbing and the more sensitive plants that need protection and encouragement together with a watchful eye and knowledge to recognise the useful adventives, the plants that arrive from elsewhere in the neighbourhood to find their own places in the beds.

The soil below the grass is full of rubble, crockery, glass, bed springs, brackets, hinges and all manner of broken stuff. Rather than remove all of it, and continuing to work with a sentiment of minimal intervention, I removed just enough of the debris to allow plants to grow their roots between and through the rough soil. Working with the regular gardeners, visitors and children we collectively mapped out the beds with cardboard before applying a thin layer of compost, placing the edge tiles and planting the herbs and seeds directly into the soil. Many medicinal herbs are wild plants, they do not expect perfect tilth, or level landscaped beds and as such would thrive in the rougher ground. To aid their growth, the regular gardeners sourced donations of municipal compost to mulch and enrich the soil, giving the plants the best start. The beds are narrow enough to be reached easily from the edges to the centre so that no one needs to tread on them in order to pick or maintain the herbs. You kneel or sit at ground level reaching into and across the abundance of new shoots and what are now, a year on, established plants.

The requirement of the plants for sun, dappled shade, and deep shade took priority in the planting design. I also worked to a loose planting plan, placing herbs that help with digestion, herbs beneficial to women and the reproductive life cycle, that support the immune system and soothe sore skin together. Herbs that can be used as first aid, for scratches, bruises, stings, headaches form another group of planting. Herbs that support several bodily systems are repeated throughout
each group and bed.

The existing herbs, dandelions, plantain, evening primrose, marigolds have been allowed to proliferate and self seed moving into and outside of the designed beds. The garden will continue to evolve over time. Some of the plants will begin to locate themselves in places where they prefer to grow, stretching towards shade, sun or different soil.

Selecting the additional herbs and plants was undertaken by initially choosing those that grow well in this climate, that are commonly used in household remedies and are not particularly rare. None of the plants in the beds are poisonous, although all medicinal herbs contain active substances and should be used with caution, not too much of any one plant and preferably consulting a herbal recipe, a guide book or following a consultation with a herbalist. Nothing should be used if uncertain of its identity so please check for a label, use a plant identification book or reliable mobile phone app.

The medicinal plants are labelled with their British common names alongside their Latin classification. We would like people from other cultures and countries to share the names they know for particular plants to expand our knowledge. New Zealand Hemp or flax lily is named Harakeke by Māori, Marsh Mallow, a medicinal herb used since Egyptians times is known as Khatmi in its native West Africa. The question of naming is a project in itself. Artist Senha Solanki developed a tool kit for the garden encouraging visitors to explore the space and create new means of naming, understanding and connecting to the plants.

The Library of Medicinal Herbs is a calm, welcoming space for organised workshops and individual consultations with Herbal Medicine Practitioners, foragers and people with skills to share. It will also be a place to exchange everyday knowledge and recipes for simple herbal remedies between people from all over the world who find themselves working, growing, socialising and playing in this garden.

All images courtesy Rebecca Lupton photography