What was a Physic Garden?
A physic garden is a type of herb garden with medicinal plants. Medieval physic gardens that originated at the time of Emperor Charlemagne (742 AD-814 AD). Physic Gardens included various sections including one for medicinal plants called the herbularis or hortus medicus.
Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) set aside part of the Vatican grounds in 1447, for a garden of medicinal plants that were used to promote the teaching of botany, & this was a forerunner to the University gardens at Padua & Pisa established in the 1540s. The founding of many early botanic gardens was instigated by members of the medical profession.
English physician & botanist William Turner (1509/10-1568) established physic gardens at Cologne, Wells, & Kew; he also wrote to William Cecil, 1st Baron Lord Burghley (1520-1598) recommending that a physic garden be established at Cambridge University with himself at its head.
William Turner, English naturalist, botanist, & physician known as the “father of English botany.” His A New Herball was the first English herbal to include original material. Turner studied at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. His dissatisfaction with derivative herbals led him to write Libellus de re herbaria novus (1538), the 1st essay on scientific botany in English. Turner’s fervent Protestant religious beliefs led to several periods of exile to the European continent, during which he studied with & met numerous naturalists & learned about contemporary discoveries in botany. An extended version of the Libellus entitled The Names of Herbes (1548) was written in English, containing German & French synonyms, & included unorthodox & vivid original observations.
Turner’s best-known work, A New Herball (in 3 parts; 1551–68), demonstrated his medical bias. He chose to write in English, the vernacular language, so that practical botanical & medical knowledge would be widely available to medical practitioners & apothecaries. These volumes gave the first clear, systematic survey of English plants, & with their woodcuts (mainly copied from Leonhart Fuchs's 1542 De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes) & detailed observations based on Turner's own field studies putting the herbal on an altogether higher footing than in earlier works. Turner included an account of their "uses & vertues." For the first time, a herbal was available in England in the vernacular, from which people could identify the main English plants without difficulty.
The 1597 Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes by herbalist John Gerard (c1545-1612) was said to be the catalogue raisonné of physic gardens, both public & private, which were instituted throughout Europe. It listed 1,030 plants found in his physic garden at Holborn, & was the first such catalogue printed.
Herbalist John Gerard (c1545-1612)
The physic garden in Oxford, founded by Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby (1573-1643), who chose German botanist Jacob Bobart the Elder (1599-1680) as Superintendent, dates to 1632.
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| Hrrball, or Generall Historie of Plantes 1597 |
The physic garden in Oxford, founded by Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby (1573-1643), who chose German botanist Jacob Bobart the Elder (1599-1680) as Superintendent, dates to 1632.
Jacob Bobart the Elder (1599-1680) was a German botanist who was persuaded to move to England to be the 1st head gardener & superintendent of Oxford Physic/Botanic Garden. He was appointed superintendent of the Oxford Physic Garden after its foundation in 1632, as the 1st such garden in England by Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby. Actually, Bobart was the 2nd choice for the position, John Tradescant the Elder having turned down the position. Bobart arrived by 1641. He had the right to sell fruit & vegetables from the garden, which proved a necessity; when his benefactor Danvers died & the English Civil War meant that his estates were sequestrated. In 1648, Bobart the Elder published an anonymous catalogue, in alphabetical order, of 1600 plants then under his care (Catalogus plantarum horti medici Oxoniensis, scil. Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus). This Herbal was revised in 1658 by his son, Jacob Bobart the Younger, Dr. Philip Stephens, & William Brown. Jacob Bobart the Elder died on 4 February 1680, at the Oxford Physic Garden's original garden house.
Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby (1573-1643)
Begun in Westminster & later moved to Chelsea, the Apothecaries founded the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1673, of which Philip Miller (1691-1771) author of The Gardeners Dictionary, was the most notable Director. By 1676, the position of "Keeper of the Physic Garden" was held by the Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh.
Some other early physic gardens included:
1334 Venice; & at Salerno, founded by Matthaeus Silvaticus
1544 Pisa, begun by Cosimo de' Medici, with Luca Ghini & Andrea Cesalpino for its first two directors
1545 Padua
1547 Bologna, founded by Ghini
1560 Zurich, founded by Conrad Gessner
1570 Paris
1577 Leyden, under direction of Carolus Clusius
1580 Leipzig
1593 Montpelier, by Henry IV
