Chelsea Physic Garden

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Chelsea Physic Garden
II Chelsea Physic Garden, London, UK.jpg
Chelsea Physic Garden, London
Chelsea Physic Garden
Location Chelsea, London
Coordinates 51°29′6″N0°9′46″W / 51.48500°N 0.16278°W / 51.48500; -0.16278
Area3.5 acres (1.4 ha)
Created1673 (1673)
Founder Worshipful Society of Apothecaries
Species5,000
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

The Chelsea Physic Garden was established as the Apothecaries' Garden in London, England, in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to grow plants to be used as medicines. [1] This four acre physic garden, the term here referring to the science of healing, is among the oldest botanical gardens in Britain, after the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. Its rock garden is the oldest in Europe devoted to alpine plants and Mediterranean plants. The largest fruiting olive tree in Britain is there, protected by the garden's heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is doubtless the world's northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors.[ citation needed ] Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, the garden became a registered charity [2] in 1983 and was opened to the general public for the first time.

Contents

The garden is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine. [3] It is also Grade I listed in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England by English Heritage. [4]

History

The garden in summer 2006 Chelsea physic garden.jpg
The garden in summer 2006
The garden with the house visible in the background Chelsea Physic Garden with house.jpg
The garden with the house visible in the background

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries initially established the garden on a leased site of Sir John Danvers' well-established garden in Chelsea, London. This house, called Danvers House, adjoined the mansion that had once been the house of Sir Thomas More. Danvers House was pulled down in 1696 to make room for Danvers Street.

In 1713, Sir Hans Sloane purchased from Charles Cheyne the adjacent Manor of Chelsea, about 4 acres (1.6 ha), which he leased in 1722 to the Society of Apothecaries for £5 a year in perpetuity, requiring in the Deed of Conveyance that the garden supply the Royal Society, of which he was a principal, with 50 good herbarium samples per year, up to a total of 2,000 plants. [5]

That initiated the golden age of the Chelsea Physic Garden under the direction of Philip Miller (1722–1770), when it became the world's most richly stocked botanic garden. Its seed-exchange programme was established following a visit in 1682 from Paul Hermann, a Dutch botanist connected with the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and has lasted until the present day. The seed exchange programme's most notable act may have been the introduction of cotton into the colony of Georgia and more recently, the worldwide spread of the Madagascar periwinkle ( Catharanthus roseus ).[ citation needed ]

Isaac Rand, a member and a fellow of the Royal Society, published a condensed catalogue of the garden in 1730, Index plantarum officinalium, quas ad materiae medicae scientiam promovendam, in horto Chelseiano. Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal (1737–1739) was illustrated partly from specimens taken from the Chelsea Physic Garden. In 1781, the collection of specimens was donated by the Royal Society to the British Museum in Bloomsbury, then moved in 1881 to the Department of Botany of the British Museum in Kensington, now the Natural History Museum. [5]

Sir Joseph Banks worked with the head gardener and curator John Fairbairn during the 1780–1814 period. Fairbairn specialized in growing and cultivating plants from around the world.

Parts of the garden have been lost to road development – the river bank during 1874 construction of the Chelsea Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames, and a strip of the garden to allow widening of Royal Hospital Road. What remains is a 3.5 acres (1.4 ha) patch in the heart of London. [6]

The Trustees of the London Parochial Charities took over management of the garden in 1899 and for the majority of the twentieth century, it was used for scientific research and was not open to the public. [7] In 1983, the garden became a charity and was run by a private board of trustees, and a few years later in 1987, it was open to the general public for the first time. [8]

In 2001 the then director Rosie Atkins led changes that improved the educational role of the garden. [9]

As of 2020, the chairman of the trust that manages the garden is Michael Prideaux. [10] His predecessor was Sarah Troughton. [11] The garden director is Sue Medway. As of 2020 the garden is raising funds to restore the historic glasshouses on the site. [12]

Current garden

As of October 2017, the garden included 5,000 plants, in areas such as: [13]

Associated people

Ensign of the garden Chelsea Physic Garden, ensign.jpg
Ensign of the garden

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Banks</span> English naturalist and botanist (1743–1820)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Botanical garden</span> Garden used for scientific study, conservation and public display

A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. It is their mandate as a botanical garden that plants are labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be glasshouses or shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants that are not native to that region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Sloane</span> Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist and collector (1660–1753)

Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, was an Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist, and collector, with a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum, London. He was elected to the Royal Society at the age of 24. Sloane travelled to the Caribbean in 1687 and documented his travels and findings with extensive publications years later. Sloane was a renowned medical doctor among the aristocracy, and was elected to the Royal College of Physicians at age 27. Though he is credited with the invention of chocolate milk, it is more likely that he learned the practice of adding milk to drinking chocolate while living and working in Jamaica. Streets and places were later named after him, including Hans Place, Hans Crescent, and Sloane Square in and around Chelsea, London – the area of his final residence – and also Sir Hans Sloane Square in Killyleagh, his birthplace in Ulster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wardian case</span> Early type of terrarium, a sealed protective container for plants

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Worshipful Society of Apothecaries</span> Livery company for pharmacists and physicians in the City of London

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Miller</span> British botanist (1691-1771)

Philip Miller FRS was an English botanist and gardener of Scottish descent. Miller was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden for nearly 50 years from 1722, and wrote the highly popular The Gardeners Dictionary.

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William Hudson FRS was a British botanist and apothecary based in London. His main work was Flora Anglica, published in 1762. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1761.

William Houstoun (1695?–1733) was a Scottish surgeon and botanist who collected plants in the West Indies, Mexico and South America.

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Events from the year 1673 in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physic garden</span> Planned space for growing medicinal plants

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Isaac Rand (1674–1743) was an English botanist and apothecary, who was a lecturer and director at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

References

Notes

  1. "History". Chelsea Physic Garden.
  2. "THE CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN COMPANY, registered charity no. 286513". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  3. "Medical Museums". medicalmuseums.org. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  4. "Chelsea Physic Garden, Kensington and Chelsea - 1000147". Historic England.
  5. 1 2 Stungo, Ruth (1993). "The Royal Society Specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden 1722-1799". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 47 (2): 213–224. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1993.0028. ISSN   0035-9149. JSTOR   531786. PMID   11623188. S2CID   43440960.
  6. Minter, Sue (1996). Apothecaries' Garden. The History Press. ISBN   9780752495279.
  7. Elliott, Charles (November–December 1998). "The apothecaries' plot". Horticulture: The Art of American Gardening. 95 (9) via Gale Academic OneFile.
  8. "History". Chelsea Physic Garden. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
  9. "Top gardeners honoured for their impact". The Garden: 15. May 2024.
  10. "Trustees". Chelsea Physic Garden. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  11. Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire, wiltshire.gov.uk, accessed 12 September 2022
  12. Prynn, Jonathan (9 December 2020). "Million pound appeal launched to save threatened glasshouses at Chelsea Physic Garden". Evening Standard.
  13. "Plant collections". Chelsea Physic Garden.

Further reading