Mystery and Magic of Plants

I’m going to London this week and I’ll be visiting the Chelsea Physic Garden that 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. Most often, an herb is medicinal, culinary, or has some magic connected to it. Botanists differentiate herbs from other plants by the stem. A woody stem above the ground, is not an herb but a tree or a shrub so it follows that parsely is an herb but rosemary is not. I wrote about the Chelsea Physic Garden in my new novel. The garden didn’t play a leading role (it might in my new novel) but I weave all things botanical through my stories: gardens, plants, flowers, botanical art. There is nothing like a garden to grab hold of your heart and not let go.

So while I am visiting a famous garden I also like to walk through the imaginary gardens of my mind. Now can you imagine being in England in January or February; snow on the garden of a mysterious house and heavy on the roof of a Camellia House? A stone house perhaps, or one made of splendid mellowed brickwork, with large casement windows that could be opened to let in the sunshine and fresh air of the warmer months. Magnificent red, white or pink blooms with luminous dark green leaves. I have started writing my next novel, as yet unnamed, but one of my characters will visit a house with a Camellia House when she should be somewhere else.

Culzean Castle, Camellia House

So, you can see my mind is full of all sorts of possibilities: a physic garden, a Camellia House, winter snow and summer days. I can see I’ll never run out of gardens to write about, medieval gardens, (there is one in my second novel) flower gardens, knot gardens even the urban garden, or plants with beautiful or unusual names: blue lacecap hydrangeas, a rose called, Peace, acanthus, and bachelors buttons.