Gardens The State Botanical Garden of Georgia
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The Herb and Physic Garden collections contain a wide array of species for household use, along with many that are part of the folkloric tradition. Herbs have been used for cooking and dyeing, in fragrance and beauty products, and for ceremonial and medicinal purposes. Featured in the center parterre are species grown by ancient civilizations, as well as those cultivated in monastic gardens of the Middle Ages. Many of these plants were brought to the New World by early European settlers.
Exploration and interaction with the Native Peoples yielded useful plants from the American continent. Examples of these are planted throughout the collection, with particular emphasis in the Physic Garden, where native species used by Dr. Lindsey Durham are showcased. Dr. Durham was a well-known 19th century Georgia physician who resided in Scull Shoals, now part of Oconee County. His 13 acre herb garden yielded the raw materials for a pharmacopeia of patent medicines. The beneficial attributes of these native herbs are being increasingly recognized by the public, along with the pharmaceutical industry, and many more of these valuable species are being incorporated into our collections.
“Physic gardens were the forerunners of modern botanical gardens—gardens whose primary mission is the acquisition and dissemination of botanical knowledge… Stimulated by the reliance on herbal medicines in the 16th and 17th centuries, European medical schools founded botanical gardens devoted mainly to medicinal species. The gardens were used for training medical students, to grow plants from which to extract medicines and conduct research.”—The Physic Garden at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Plants useful to the Cherokee and Creek Nations of the Southeastern U. S. are located in the nearby American Indian Plants section of the International Garden.