2/13/2024 0 Comments Magical garden show![]() According to an old story, one night the Wandering Jew came to the house of a sick man. Taken in wine, it was supposed to cure the bites of snakes and rabid animals. Dioscorides, a Greek doctor who served in Nero’s army and wrote De Materia Medica, the first important pharmacopeia, mentioned that it was useful in healing wounds. īalm ( Melissa officinalis): As its name suggests, balm was considered a plant with significant medicinal powers. Nowadays, its seeds are used to make chartreuse, and its candied stalks are used to decorate cakes and puddings. It was also traditionally used to cure colds and relieve coughs. Michael the Archangel, since the plant was said to flower on his day. ![]() I have included them simply for those who appreciate the myth and folklore of plants.Īngelica ( Angelica archangelica): A tall plant with umbels of greenish white flowers, Angelica was believed to have been named after an angel who appeared during a plague, announcing that it could be used to cure that dreaded medieval disease. ![]() But be warned: some of them are poisonous and should not be planted where they could accidentally be eaten by children or pets. If you want to plant a magical garden of your own, here are some plants that have mythic associations or were considered magical in the past. ( Rosa canina will not, in fact, cure rabies.) Some of these plants still have medicinal value, although many of the healing powers associated with them were a matter of folklore rather than fact. But all of us, if we have space in our gardens, can include plants that were once believed to have magical properties. The New England Flower Show no longer exists (it was one more casualty of the economic recession), and few of us would want the sorts of elaborate Japanese gardens or collections of roses I saw that day. I could see myself living in the cottage, smelling mint and lavender every morning when a breeze blew in the window. As soon as you approached it, you could smell the sharpness of mint, the sweetness of lavender. At the back of the display space was a small cottage, and growing all around it were herbs and medicinal plants, the sorts of plants you would find in medieval herbals like John Gerard’s Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597) and Nicholas Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (1653). And then, I saw a display that was different from the others. They were beautiful, but I could never imagine having a garden so elaborate, so perfectly designed. I walked through arbors, between stalls selling pots and seeds, looking at the displays. But in the Flower Show, it was as though summer had already arrived. Outside, it was a wet New England spring, and only the forsythia were blooming. It was wonderful, walking through those gardens, although I knew the plants must have been forced. One year, a friend of mine who is also a gardener urged me to go, so I went. ![]() The most famous gardeners and garden centers in New England would create displays: Japanese gardens, shade gardens, white gardens, bouquets of roses on stands. But during the Flower Show, the building was transformed into a series of display spaces. It took place once a year in a large building that was usually filled with business conventions. Once upon a time, there was an event called the New England Flower Show.
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