Medicinal garden returns to the Allard Pierson courtyard garden
The Allard Pierson is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the redesign of the heritage institution’s historic courtyard garden. The aim is to restore it to its 17th-century state as a Hortus Medicus.
After all the renovations to the building itself in recent years, the Allard Pierson is now going to work on the exterior of the heritage institution: the courtyard garden, which has been somewhat neglected in recent years, is being revamped and will once again become the medicinal courtyard garden – the so-called Hortus Medicus – that it was in the seventeenth century. Currently, the courtyard garden is mainly a lawn surrounded by a few trees, but it will become a place where heritage collections such as the gastronomic collections, the Hortus Botanicus book collection, the medical collection, and the special 18th-century Moninckx Atlas can be consulted.
“The Hortus Medicus was a garden where, in the seventeenth century, doctors and pharmacists were taught the medicinal use of plants and herbs,” says Myriam van der Hoek, curator of natural history and Artis Library at the Allard Pierson. “Amsterdam pharmacists had to take an exam in the garden before they could start working as pharmacists.” Four hundred years later, that educational function of yesteryear is making a slight comeback. The new style courtyard garden is becoming a green, educational, publicly accessible meeting place for anyone interested in botanical-medical history.
The new Hortus Medicus should not be confused with the Hortus Botanicus on Plantage Middenlaan. Until the early 1990s, this botanical garden with its palm house and orangery also belonged to the UvA, but because the garden lost its scientific importance to the university, the Hortus was separated from the UvA and is now a public botanical institution. The objective of the crowdfunding is to collect ten thousand euro’s.
