Chelsea Physic Garden

Last updated

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 garden has high brick walls which trap heat, giving it a warm micro-climate, and it claims the largest fruiting olive tree in Britain and the world's northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors. [2] Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, the garden became a registered charity [3] 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. [4] It is also Grade I listed in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England by English Heritage. [5]

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. [6]

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. [6]

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. [7]

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. [8] 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. [9]

In 2001 the then director Rosie Atkins led changes that improved the educational role of the garden. [10]

As of 2025, the co-chair of the trust that manages the Garden are Anna Jobson and Andrew Woodward. Since 2014, the garden director is Sue Medway MBE.

Current garden

As of October 2017, the garden included 5,000 plants, in areas such as: [11]

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)

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.

<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. He had 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Bartram</span> American botanist (1699–1777)

John Bartram was an American botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for most of his career. Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus said he was the "greatest natural botanist in the world." Bartram corresponded with and shared North American plants and seeds with a variety of scientists in England and Europe.

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

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London is one of the livery companies of the City of London. It is one of the largest livery companies and ranks 58th in their order of precedence.

The London Museums of Health & Medicine is a group that brings together some of the activities of several museums in London, England, related to health and medicine. The group was founded in 1991.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh</span> Botanical garden in Edinburgh, Scotland

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species, whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.

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, New Spain and South America.

James Petiver was a London apothecary, a fellow of the Royal Society as well as London's informal Temple Coffee House Botany Club, famous for his specimen collections in which he traded and study of botany and entomology. He corresponded with John Ray and Maria Sibylla Merian. Some of his notes and specimens were used by Carolus Linnaeus in descriptions of new species. The genus Petiveria was named in his honour by Charles Plumier. His collections were bought by Sir Hans Sloane and became a part of the Natural History Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Dionysius Ehret</span> German scientist and illustrator (1708-1770)

Georg Dionysius Ehret was a German botanist and entomologist known for his botanical illustrations.

Thomas Moore was a British gardener and botanist. An expert on ferns and fern allies from the British Isles, he served as Curator of the Society of Apothecaries Garden from 1848 to 1887. In 1855 he authored The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland.The standard author abbreviation T.Moore is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator)</span> Scottish illustrator, writer (1699–1758)

Elizabeth Blackwell was a botanical illustrator best known as drawer and engraver of the plates for A Curious Herbal, published between 1737 and 1739. It illustrated medicinal plants in a reference work for the use of physicians and apothecaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Fraser (botanist)</span> Scottish botanist (1750-1811)

John Fraser, FLS, F.R.H.S., was a Scottish botanist who collected plant specimens around the world, from North America and the West Indies to Russia and points between, with his primary career activity from 1780 to 1810. Fraser was a commissioned plant collector for Catherine, Czar of Russia in 1795, Paul I of Russia in 1798, and for the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1806; he issued nursery catalogues c. 1790 - 1796 and had an important herbarium that was eventually sold to the Linnean Society.

Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre was a horticulturist and a British peer. Petre was responsible in the late 1730s for the layout of the gardens at Worksop Manor in Nottinghamshire. He was also responsible for the first extensive planting of North American trees in Great Britain. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A Caribbean genus of the verbena family was named for him.

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

A physic garden is a type of herb garden with medicinal plants. Known since at least 800, they are the predecessors of botanical gardens.

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

John Graefer or Johann Andreas Graeffer was a German botanist nurseryman born in Helmstedt. Graeffer/Graefer is remembered by garden historians as having introduced a number of exotic plants to British gardens and to have worked for the king of Naples at the palace of Caserta.

References

Notes

  1. "History". Chelsea Physic Garden.
  2. Schwarzbach, Fredric (28 April 2023), Walking London's Circle Line: A Pedestrian Guide to Central London, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 151, ISBN   978-0-7618-7375-4
  3. "THE CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN COMPANY, registered charity no. 286513". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  4. "Medical Museums". medicalmuseums.org. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  5. "Chelsea Physic Garden, Kensington and Chelsea - 1000147". Historic England.
  6. 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.
  7. Minter, Sue (1996). Apothecaries' Garden. The History Press. ISBN   9780752495279.
  8. Elliott, Charles (November–December 1998). "The apothecaries' plot". Horticulture: The Art of American Gardening. 95 (9) via Gale Academic OneFile.
  9. "History". Chelsea Physic Garden. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
  10. "Top gardeners honoured for their impact". The Garden: 15. May 2024.
  11. "Plant collections". Chelsea Physic Garden.

Further reading