Extract from Why Gardens Matter by Joanna Geyer-Kordesch

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26 why gardens matter The living and the dead are invariably mixed in these contemplations. It behoves us to remember this when studying the mighty abbeys of the Borders. They were given over to powerful lay landowners. Yet their ruins remain to remind us of both the Reformation’s critique of the Catholic faith and that through historic turmoil nothing on Earth is permanent. Even the herbal remedies of the monks and their arduous working of the monastic lands resulted in impermanence. Yet their legacy endures. The medicinal gardens and orchards are lost. But to recollect in sweetness and light, to contemplate troubles and to wander in peace among weathered arches is just the same as in the past. In the fine volume, Scotland’s Lost Gardens, Albertus Magnus is quoted describing the cloister. He says there should be lawns and places to sit and meditate. Behind these should be well-scented flowers, such as violets, lilies and roses. And there should be herbs that cure and add their scent too. In this peaceful enclave people will relax and think more of eternal things. Albert the Great was pointing out the beneficial uses attached to abbeys, cathedrals and priories. Although the gardens were lost or secularised in Scotland, their regenerative power and their central role continued in the Catholic countries of the Counter-Reformation. And Scotland did not cut itself off from Europe. Abbots, bishops and the nobility knew and learned from being abroad and their contacts there. Some church leaders still had to go to Rome and the nobility often married aristocrats from the Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy or Austria. Students went to universities across Europe and trade expanded. In Klosterneuburg, Austria, the same legend as that of David I of Scotland exists about a stag with a holy cross between the antlers that led to the foundation of an abbey. David I too, as he encountered the stag, in peril for his life, saw a vision and founded Holyrood Abbey. The Austrian Monarch of medieval times did the same in Klosterneuburg. The spiritual origins of
the medieval and monastery garden 27 great complexes as large as these can be the same though almost a continent apart. Along the Danube River there are many places that are monasteries still, some hidden in valleys, such as the Cistercian Zwettl Abbey, in a remote valley towards the border with Slovakia north of the Danube. Or they are widely seen on the mountain tops, such as at Goettweig, or the Augustinian Melk Abbey or Altenburg Abbey on a rise in Lower Austria. In an old painting of Altenburg an orchard is shown, which is surely much like the orchards cultivated by the religious orders and their labourers in the great Scottish abbeys. These grand monasteries in Austria are predominantly of Baroque splendour dedicated to the Virgin Mary. They are still inhabited by monks and their devout practices. And they still have gardens and orchards. Many of these are there now for the monks to walk and meditate and are largely private, but there are also gardens open to the public. Many are quiet places and ideal for solitude and silence. The gardens and cloisters were places for reading, writing and meditation. The first two were considered an art in times when few could practise such skills. Meditation is still valued, but places for such solitude and introversion are becoming scarce. Lost gardens are like the lost monasteries of Scotland. But herbal gardens became part of medicinal practice beyond the holy precincts. In Edinburgh, the Royal Botanic Garden is worth visiting to see how herbal medicine has changed. It has its origins not in monks’ knowledge, but in the interests of the well-travelled community of Scottish doctors. Like members of the clergy, the nobility, merchants and scholars they continued travelling in Europe and building on medieval connections. The whole world was gradually being explored and gardens in far places were eagerly sought out because new and unknown plants interested professionals as well as committed lay people. Existing gardens were planted with exotic plants as well as those with medicinal uses. Doctors had an abiding interest in herbal
Page 1: Why Gardens Matter JOANNA GEYER-KOR
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Page 7 and 8: Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introdu
Page 9 and 10: Introduction gardens have a special
Page 11 and 12: introduction 9 can glory in nature.
Page 13: introduction 11 it is that speaks t
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Page 32: So many gardening books tell you wh

Extract from Why Gardens Matter by Joanna Geyer-Kordesch

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