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The small Tuscan town of Sansepolcro is best known for the paintings that saved its streets. The Resurrection of Piero della Francesca, called the “greatest painting in the world” by Aldous Huxley, depicts World War II artillery officer Tony Clark stopping Allied artillery fire against orders. That was the reason.
The plan worked, no one was ambushed, and Sansepolcro and the “Resurrection”, as well as the Antony Clarke street later named after him, remained intact. I went to see it a few weeks ago when I was teaching at a writing camp near the hills of Umbria. But on that relentlessly rainy Wednesday, I went a few hundred yards and found even greater inspiration. Sansepolcro may have frescoes and statues of the Virgin, but it also has something unusual: the Herbal Museum.
herbs garden Although easy to find, there are few indoor spaces like the Avoca Museum. In fact, the Avoca Museum claims to be the only one in the world. Based in a Renaissance palace, the museum has a stone set into the entrance that hints at its apothecary tradition. Prodest Obest (harm).
Once inside, I lost track of time. And I found a surprising connection to my small garden in South London. There are only nine rooms, but they all have high ceilings, and the giant candlesticks attract attention, along with exhibits such as Mesopotamian papyri and small vials. On the floor stands a bronze medicinal mortar filled with dried herbs. Plump pale chamomile flowers and thin yellow straws of calendula give the palace a fragrance and cause a childlike temptation to touch them. Fennel has an intoxicating odor. The normally tall and imposing Angelica arcangelica is transformed into a strange, pungent dust. And who knew that bay leaves, always tragic, kept in a little jar in the cupboard, could evoke the sound of a crackling fire when rubbed together?
One of the rooms is a reproduction of a 16th century warehouse. A scale and a giant wooden sieve hang from the wall. A kind of cauldron stands in the fireplace. The ceiling is covered with dried herbs in shades of taupe, amber, and earth green. The colors of the Umbrian hillsides and the paintings of Piero della Francesca.
A sign on the wall describes the harvesters who gathered the herbs according to regulations. tempo balsamicor the times when they believed that the concentration of active ingredients was highest (for example, mandrake was painstakingly uprooted on the night of the full moon, cyclamen on the last Thursday of the lunar cycle, chamomile before sunrise).
Although they are rarely mentioned in museums, and evidence of women is limited to nude paintings on archival jars, they would have harvested herbs and created remedies at night. Their knowledge of the healing properties of plants was passed down through the generations, but was rarely incorporated into ‘herbals’ or records. The “old wife” favored in Tudor times for learning about plants became synonymous with fallacy over time.
The first plants I grew when I started carefully teaching myself gardening were herbs. My mother runs an herb garden and would always send us out to pick herbs for dinner. When I finally had my own space, I grew what I knew would be useful.
Standing under that ceiling filled with dried herbs, I couldn’t help but admire the deep understanding of the seasons that these women must have cultivated and passed down. However, I also thought about how we interact with the seasons in which plants grow. please don’t growing up. At this time of year, we rely on the summer’s bountiful preserves – green tomato and plum chutney, bags of blackberries stashed in the freezer, and dig dormant bulbs into the soil as we imagine next year’s blooms. I may fill it in.
It may have been falling outside, but this Tuscan museum room felt like returning to sunny days at home. Achillea is small, mellow, and prolifically propagated in dry form, reminding me of the bright yellow umbellifers that emerged from my gravel garden this summer. It was starting to fade, so I cut it up for a vase on my dressing table.
After a week of instruction, I returned to the garden with the intoxicating aroma of the Avoca Museum fresh in my memory and a determination to save some of my plants before winter sets in. tempo balsamic;but I was moved by the idea of extending and transforming its use. The fennel seed heads are no longer sculptured skeletons meant to capture the low winter light, but instead express the rich aroma of aniseed. Okay, Maud Greeve’s modern herbs They told me it was to be placed between linens to keep out insects.
Next to fennel are fat rosehips, from which you can make a syrup rich in vitamin C to boost immunity. Grieve’s book gave me a new understanding of plants that I choose primarily for their resistance and beauty. The sweet woodruff that fills in the troublesome borders makes a pleasant ice cream, and the dried flowers of the hollyhock make a good base for tea. It’s refreshing to see familiar plants again. Erigeron canadensis, a slightly pungent self-seeding flea tree, has been found to look better when cut and dried. I don’t have the expertise to deploy medicine for inflamed tonsils, but it will probably look better than the one currently invading my window box.
Robin Lane Fox is absent.
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