Herb Garden

About our 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.

This herb garden uses box hedging and hazel to create a framework. You can click on this link to download descriptions of the Magic & Myth plants

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.

The Cancer Garden

Created in loving remembrance of the life of Harry, The 8th Lord Bolton.

A brief introduction

Cancer has been recognised as a disease for a long time. The world’s earliest known record of human cancer was in the Edwin Smith Papyrus c. 1600 BC, a medical treatise from Ancient Egypt based on an older manuscript from as far back as c. 3000 BC.

The four Humors

A theory put forward by Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC) dominated medical diagnosis and treatment for centuries. He devised a comprehensive medicinal system called The Four Humors (bodily fluids) which were Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile. An imbalance of any of these was seen as the cause of all disease. Cancer was thought to be caused by an excess of Black Bile which was also believed to cause a melancholic temperament. Its properties were seen as ‘dry and cold’ requiring ‘hot and moist’ treatments. This was the guide as to what plants might be useful.
Treatment for cancer involved bloodletting, surgery, cautery, exercise, diet and medicinal remedies using laxatives (purgatives) and diuretics to remove black bile, along with topical treatments to dry up or destroy cancerous ulcers.

Planted here is a selection of the medicinal plants used in medieval times for the treatment of ulcers, tumours, and an excess of black bile. We have included a few plants for remembrance. For a more extensive plant list, please click here.

For a more extensive plant list and to see all our historical research.

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

Two new beds for 2026:

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.