For over ten years a dedicated team has worked to create and tend the Herb Garden. Plants were cultivated by the monks of Norwich Cathedral for medicinal use, for brewing, dyeing, and strewing on the floor of the cathedral, as well as for the kitchen - to give flavour to the rather bland diet.
Most non-indigenous plants came from Arab, Greek or Roman sources, and were distributed across Europe via the medical school at Salerno, Sicily. There is documentary evidence of correspondence about herbs among monks as early as the 7th century. Mediterranean plants would have been more expensive and harder to obtain than locally available substitutes, so writers of the early Herbals circulated in British monasteries made use of Northern European plants.
The plants in this garden have been chosen to represent the various categories of herbs. We have tried to include plants closest to older species where possible. Please correct us if we have made any mistakes.
When recreating the Herb Garden in the grounds of Emmaus House at 65 The Close we chose the nearest possible site to the original Infirmary Garden of the Benedictine Monastery.
The new garden was designed by Lis McLoughlin R.I.B.A. She decided to celebrate the unique Norwich Cathedral Roof Bosses as part of her design; she incorporated the distinctive vaulting pattern in the roof of the Nave as the basis for two box hedge knot gardens. A knot garden is a formally designed garden in a square frame normally growing a variety of herbs with gravel paths in between.
The Herb Garden was also designed to feature elements of a traditional 'physic' garden. ‘Physic’ here refers to the science of healing and a ‘physic’ garden refers to the gardens developed specifically for the purpose of growing healing herbs and training would be apothecaries in their uses. The best known ‘physic’ garden in England is probably the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, which was originally founded as the Apothecaries' Garden.
To find out more about physic and knot gardens you might be interested in the following websites:
www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/
www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/