Carolingian Garden Plants: 3 Lists, One Garden
Carolingian garden plants from three ninth-century sources, compared side by side: the Capitulare de Villis, the Plan of St Gall and Walahfrid’s Hortulus.
Garden Notes
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The Perpetual Vegetable Food Forest Charlemagne Already Knew
Good King Henry, Strawberry Spinach, and the Medieval Logic of the Perpetual Vegetable Food Forest. The perpetual vegetable food forest movement is certain it has discovered something new. Plant once, harvest always — the perennial logic of abundance over extraction, of working with a plant’s nature rather than against it. It is a genuinely good…
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How to Plan a Herb Garden: A Step-by-Step Guide
If you want to know how to plan a herb garden, start where the monks did. Around the year 820, someone drew a plan for an ideal monastery on five sheets of parchment sewn together. It survives in the abbey library of St. Gall, in Switzerland, and it includes a small physic garden: sixteen straight…
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Herbs to Grow in Your Garden: Fifteen Essentials
Above: the garden Homer Kizer built for me in Kinde, Michigan. Some time around the year 800, Charlemagne’s court drew up a list of plants to be grown on every royal estate, and it is still a good guide to the herbs to grow in your garden. Sage, rosemary, lovage and fennel are all on…
