My Fitbit inspired me to walk up to The Cloisters for another look on March 23, a beautiful, sunny day with a chilly north wind. I wanted to visit the Herb Garden, which contains more than 250 species of herbs cultivated during the Middle Ages. I was curious to see what, if anything, would be peaking up out of the ground.
According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art website (The Cloisters is part of The Met.), the "Bonnefont" Cloister is pieced together from a destroyed monastery in Tarbes, France, in the high Pyrenees. "Bonnefont", technically, is a misnomer. In any case, the Herb Garden within the cloister bears all of the hallmarks of a medieval monastic garden: raised beds, a central wellhead, and wattle fences. Medieval monasteries preserved herbal knowledge that had been accumulated for centuries. Hidden from the world, the monks grew the herbs in "physic" gardens, pounded them into medicines, and published the herbals that a few centuries later became the basis for botany and pharmacology. The monasteries were factories unto themselves.
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| Bonnefont Cloister and Herb Garden; the wellhead remains covered for now. |
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| Helleborus in foreground, gallanthus, in background |
Sheltered by wattle in raised beds, a few herbs showed off their ability to shoot off green, purple, and white while it's still cold outside:
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| Perovskia, most likely |
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| Primula, perhaps |
Medicinally, Helleoborus, or Lenten rose, was used to treat gout and insanity during the Middle Ages. Gallanthus, which we call snow drops, is an antidote to poison. Today researchers are experimenting with Gallanthus to treat Alzheimer's disease. Perovskia, commonly called Russian Sage, is used to reduce fever. Primula, or primrose, was used to cure rheumatism and gout. Primula is a sedative and is used today to ward off headaches. All of these plants are commonly found in contemporary gardens.
This espaliered pear appearing in two photographs below was planted at the Cloisters in the 1940s and is a treasure of the collection. Espalier--training trees in a flat plane--was first undertaken by the Romans and developed into a high art in France in the Middle Ages. The plant is pruned extensively twice a year and is also tied to a wall to retain its shape.
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| Pear tree, late March 2014 |
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| Cloisters pear tree © 2004 Matthew Trump Notice ten years' growth compared to the tree in the left photo? |
A second espalier pear tree--I don't know when it was planted--is starting to send off new growth, which, presumably, will be pruned when spring really arrives. This tree is in a more protected spot than the older one.
For five years The Met published a wonderful blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2013/12/, but no posts have been entered since December, 2013. Its main creator, a woman named Deirdre, left the Cloisters and New York City in 2013.
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