VANCOUVER — It could be called the garden of life and death.
Hidden within the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden is a medicinal refuge that will transport the visitor into the 16th century. It stands out from the flowers and trees and, surrounded by a yew hedge, it looks more like a small cemetery than a garden.
The Physic Garden provides an experience similar to the garden education of physicians and apothecaries of a late medieval European university.
"During the late Middle Ages in Europe, when knowledge was hard to come by because of the plague and all that kind of stuff, the place where knowledge resided was in religious institutions and monasteries," said Douglas Justice, associate director of horticulture and collections at UBC.
"The first universities grew up around these monasteries so all the great botanical gardens all included these healing gardens.
"During all that kind of chaos in Europe during the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, a lot of knowledge was lost," he added.
"The only people who had the ability to keep that knowledge was the religious orders, which is why the Physic Garden represents the light of knowledge in a background of fear and superstition."
Even to the untrained eye the names are familiar today. Digitalis purpurea (common foxglove) is also a source of digitoxin, used in the heart drug digitalis. Monkshood, also known as aconite, was a deadly poison favoured by Anglo-Saxon archers, and Atropa belladonna, commonly known as belladonna or deadly nightshade, is another poison that's now included in atropine, which is used to treat a slow heart rate and symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Others are a bit more out of the norm. Cynara cardunculus, also known as globe artichoke, is heralded as "good to procure bodily lusts" whereas Verbascum thapsus, or mullein, was said to "both repel witches and to be used by them."
"I often have a hard time dragging people out of the Physic Garden because they love those historical, more fanciful interpretive signs," said Justice.
"People criticize botanical gardens because there's very little levity. It's all pretty dry stuff, but in the Physic Garden I think people are entertained."
The plants are best viewed from late spring to fall.
About 65,000 visitors visit the UBC Botanical Garden each year in addition to the Physic Garden, which was built in 1968.
It received help from other botanical gardens around the world, especially the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, which was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries for its apprentices to study the medicinal qualities of plants.
"That's a part of how botanical gardens work is, regardless of politics or geography, botanical gardens tend to share plants. Because we had a physic garden the Chelsea Physic Garden was very happy to oblige and provide us with material to start our own collection," Justice said.
