On a hill overlooking the Vally of the River Tyne there’s a handful of acres devoted to some very special plants. Dilston is a physic garden - not a pairing of words we’re used to hearing now, but a few hundred years ago everyone would have known its meaning. It’s a botanical medicine chest.
When we visit gardens open to the public we’re accustomed to carefully curated displays chosen for height, colour and dramatic effect. Dilston is different. In what appears to be a kind of chaos, the plants are arranged by botanical and curative relationships. Everything you need for a healing balm lies close together, aromatic herbs for creating teas or infusions are grouped in neighbouring beds. And the smells! To brush through the garden is to journey through an aromatic landscape. We’ve been on a couple of courses here - Wild Medicine, Wild Food and Making Autumnal Remedies. The results sit in our kitchen: a lotion for aching joints, an infusion to warm you on cold days, cough lozenges - all made from the plants of Dilston and all grounded in serious medical research. Inspired by our experiences at Dilston, a part of the Happy House garden is now being developed as a physic garden. So far we’ve outlined a quatrefoil sequence of beds, dug the trenches for brick paths and laid down a mix of healthy topsoil and compost. By this time next year we hope to be making our own remedies at home! www.dilstonphysicgarden.com
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The Comfort of Things is a beautiful book by Daniel Miller. Along with Significant Objects by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker and Taking Things Seriously by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes they form a magical trio of books that increase our understanding of how and why objects carry meaning and importance for us far beyond their material worth.
Balanced on top of this stack is a small opulence of a book - 'Tiny Treasures' written and illustrated by Yorkshire artist and designer and yogi Hannah Nunn. Hannah is a person who really gives the world the gift of her attention, she finds treasure every day in the natural world and this perfectly presented book captures that. Sometimes we keep objects because they link to our memories, or they are culturally significant to us. Reminders of who we are, how we got here and what is important to us. Sometimes it's the aesthetic of an object or its function that makes us want to treasure it. But those items we choose to keep, from the thousands and thousands that pass through our lives have stories that we treasure. “What five objects, things, or memories would you like to own again and why” Edith Marks (a question that is part of the Jewish Druts'yla tradition from my studies with Shonaleigh)
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At this time of year when the sun is at it’s height and the days are the longest we celebrate the Summer solstice. In ancient pagan and Celtic times we think this solstice was known as Litha. Litha is an ancient solar celebration, the high point of summer which was commemorated in some way by most agricultural societies. Stone circles, such as Stonehenge, were positioned in such a way as to emphasise the rising of the sun on Litha. Ancient traditions in Europe included rolling large wheels set on fire down hill into water. Celts and Christian monks have documented the lighting of hilltop bonfires, near holy wells, to welcome in the sunrise and to signify the sacred space between heaven and earth. These bonfires were also a totem of the sun’s full expansion. |
Josie Beszant and/or Ian Scott Massie, both artists from Masham North Yorkshire, Uk.
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