Bolton Castle in Wensleydale, family days out, falconry and weddings

Introduction to Bolton Castle Herb Garden

Set beneath the dramatic walls of Bolton Castle and with sweeping views across Wensleydale lies Bolton Castle Herb Garden, planted as a physic garden and now containing over 100 species of plants that would have been popular in medieval times. The word ‘herb’ means “any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavouring, food, medicine, or perfume”.

Medieval herb gardens were created for medicinal purposes, for use in the kitchen and for ‘strewing’ – scattering sweet smelling herbs over the floors of dwelling places and other buildings.

The Herb Garden is divided into sections: Respiratory, Digestive, Anti-inflammatory, Nerves & Emotions, Pain, Wounds, Ophthalmology (Eyes), Poisons & Plague and Magic & Myth.

Although many of the plants had multiple uses, for our purposes each has been assigned to a specific bed and a quality for which they would have been known and used. The planting period of the garden covers from c1400 to 1680 during which time the gardens were initially created and the family in residence until they relocated to Bolton Hall after the Civil War.

The garden’s design references a knot garden. These were first created in the 1550s, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and which arranged plants in a square frame of evergreen hedging with a formal symmetrical design. Original designs for knot gardens were inspired by Renaissance patterns found on carpets, cushions, carvings and embroidery. This herb garden uses box hedging and hazel to create a framework.

(Photo by Gareth Buddo)

Over the past six years I have done extensive research into the medicinal, culinary and magical uses of all the plants by consulting numerous books, manuscripts, and trawling hundreds of internet sites for information and consulting with other experts in the field. This list is the culmination of that work which I hope will be of interest.

Elizabeth Carter, Gardener at Bolton Castle

August 2022

Currently under construction are two new beds for 2023:

The Doctrine of Signatures: Pedanius Dioscorides, who practiced and wrote about medicine in ancient Rome, was one of the first to describe a ‘signature plant’ in the year AD65: “The Herb Scorpius resembles the tail of the Scorpion, and is good against his biting.” Prominent medieval physicians developed the idea, further naming it The Doctrine of Signatures, believing that God included ‘signatures’ in plants during creation to show people the condition or body part that the plant can treat. A good example of this is the spotted leaf of the Lungwort which resembled the look of a diseased lung and so they used the plant to treat respiratory diseases.

Nicholas Culpeper (1616 – 1654): One of the main English herbalists who popularized the use of medicinal plants in Medieval England. A botanist, physician and astrologer, he was educated at Cambridge University, was a man known for his vices as much as for his virtues, had many enemies, smoked plenty of tobacco and drank. Before herbalists such as Culpeper, plants were the domain of paid physicians or village ‘wise women’ who were too often persecuted for alleged witchcraft, but whose knowledge of hedgerow remedies was the only medical recourse available to the rural poor. Much to the disdain of the medical profession, Culpeper published books in English, giving healers who could not read Latin access to medical and pharmaceutical knowledge. One of his best known is ‘The Complete Herbal’ still in print today.

To find out information about each plant, please click on the photograph title. To explore different plants, you can use the right and left hand arrows or click on Return to previous page at the top. You can also click on The Gardens in the top menu and select Herb Garden to return to the full list.
You can click on this link to download descriptions of the Magic & Myth plants