Two years ago I was in Europe having the most marvellous time. Which is strange to look back on now, in this year of upheaval and restriction. But I thought, for all of us who are unable or unwilling to leave our own shores for the foreseeable future, it was a good time to share some of the gardens I enjoyed back then.
The Vasa Museum in Stockholm is Scandinavia’s busiest museum – on my first visit in 1982 the warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 was still being preserved and was behind glass with only a walkway on one side for viewing. Now, however, the ship is the centrepiece in a multi-storey gallery, allowing viewing from top to bottom on both sides.
Outside the museum is an interesting small garden, free to visit, that many visitors probably walk straight past. It is laid out as a potager with beds for those vegetables, medicinal plants and flowers grown in early 17th century Sweden by both nobility and peasants. Separate beds were dedicated to hops, linen flax (Linum usitatissimum; also used for its seeds and to make linseed oil) and Virginia tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). No chemical pesticides are used in the garden.
Among the vegetables were broad beans, blue peas (Pisum sativum ssp arvense), onions, white and yellow carrots (Daucus carota ssp sativus; orange carrots came later), cabbages (including red and kale), turnips and Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus), or poor man’s asparagus, a vegetable not grown much these days and now more often considered a weed.
Hops were used to flavour beer for the navy and this beer, together with bread and dried peas, were the most important provisions for ships’ crews. A sailor had a monthly pea ration of nine litres!
The barber surgeon prepared herbs to treat the dysentery and scurvy that raged on board, as well as for treating the many injuries that occurred, and the garden includes poppies, rose, lily, sage, mint and tormentil (Potentilla erecta), garlic, St John’s wort, balm and hollyhock.
The Museum has been as authentic as possible when choosing plants for the garden, finding seeds through Swedish Seed Savers, an arm of the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, and tracking a variety of cabbage to a gene bank in St Petersburg, Russia.
Signs dotted around the small garden are full of interesting information gleaned from the period including from a 1660s Swedish housekeeping handbook: “Medicinal plants must be reaped at the proper time. In springtime, when the root is most potent, or in autumn, when everything withers, and strength returns to the root”.
Sandra's Garden 