Unstuffed: The Urban Physic Garden

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Urban Physic Garden

A Facebook friend posted this article about the opening of an Urban Physic Garden in London, England. I love it!

Physic (in this case, meaning 'the science of healing') Gardens were developed in the 1500 and 1600's in Europe. They were usually attached to universities and used to educate physicians and apothecaries in the uses of medicinal plants and to conduct botanical research. The Chelsea Physic Garden, is a well known garden that was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. The garden still exists and is now open to the public.

Though this space is temporary, I love what the Urban Physic Garden is doing. They took an empty, wasted lot and transformed it into an inviting, vibrant, beautiful space, constructed with salvaged materials and donated plants.

The events they are offering sound wonderful. There are herb walks and workshops, a baking school, lunchtimes lectures, film nights and more!

Wow. I would love to see something like this happen here. Anyone want to start a Physic Garden with me? :)

Image Source

3 comments:

JG said...: "Our café, found in an old ambulance" heh heh heh, the Physic garden's café is a converted ambulance. ...nice touch!; June 15, 2011 at 5:12 PM
TechChik said...: Got any place in mind?; June 15, 2011 at 8:16 PM
Amber said...: JG- I thought the ambulance was really cool too.

TechChik- How about parliment hill! :)

I would actually like to see a permanent physic garden installed somewhere. There is a small, demonstration medicinal herb garden at the Billings Estate with a plaque explaining a bit about the remedies that Lamira Billings used on the homestead. (There's even one of her herbal recipes for a cough powder that I want to recreate!) I adore that spot and often take the long way home from work to visit it.

I can imagine expanding on that concept, though likely in another location, possibly more central.

I do like the idea of turning an empty lot in useable space, but I don't know if that could be done permanently or not. Hmmm....

There's a guerilla herbalist in California who treats street people and sex workers for free. He creates herb gardens in empty lots, shows the people where they are, how to use them and take care of them. I think that would be awesome if it could be incorporated into a working, physic garden, not just a pretty space to look at. Dundonald park maybe? By one (or all) of the community health centres?; June 16, 2011 at 9:50 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali