A tour of the medicinal garden at the Royal College of Physicians

21st June 2014 saw a group of us visiting this intriguing but little publicised medicinal garden in central London.

The guide in full flowThe college itself dates back to 1518 but the garden to only 1965 – the same year that the college’s current modernist building was completed on a World War Two bombsite amid the Georgian terraces. Given the starkly contrasting architecture, the garden provides a natural link with the shrub-lined greenery of Regent’s Park opposite.

We discovered that the medicinal garden is home to around 1,100 different species, all of which are used now or have been used in the past medicinally or are named after a physician – Fuchsia after Dr Fuchs, Dahlia after Dr Dahl. The aim of the garden and the arrangement of plants is clearly educational, but it is also a surprisingly attractive and calm haven of peace edging a busy road.

Brugmansia suaveolens - Angel's TrumpetsOur guide, retired physician and garden fellow Henry Oakeley, succeeded in impressing on us that most plants are at best unpalatably bitter-tasting if not downright poisonous – an evolutionary mechanism to ensure their survival – whilst the plants we cultivate for food are but a tiny minority.

The symbol of the Physicians - taking a pulseThe sap of some plants, such as Spurge, causes a nasty skin reaction, and we were shown one north American plant whose caustic sap was a cautionary blood-red. Fascinatingly though, it is sometimes the most poisonous plants which we have to thank for some of the most potent medicines – such as Yew and the Madagascar Periwinkle for treating cancer and Monkshood for rheumatic pain relief.

If we were left with a less benign view of the plants in our own gardens, I think we may also now accord them greater respect.

Susan B.    21 June 2014       Photos by Sue Ullersperger