Herb garden serves as living library on Georgia Southern Armstrong campus

Throughout history, herbs and plants have been cultivated not only as tasty fare, but for their medicinal purposes.

Greek and Roman scholars as early as 300 B.C. created volumes of works about these healing plants which inspired centuries of European physicians and apothecaries.

A new garden at the Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus serves as a physical tribute to these eras of herbalism featuring dozens of medicinal herbs, trees and shrubs.

Called the Physic Garden, it serves as a living library for students to learn more about the plants' healing properties, many of which are still used today. It is part of the arboretum on the Armstrong campus.

"The plants we selected for this collection, they needed to be able to grow in Savannah because many are native to Europe, and have been used for medicinal purposes," said Philip Schretter, grounds superintendent, on the Armstrong Campus.

"We wanted these plants to be referenced as an important herbal at some point in time throughout history," he added.

The Physic Garden is open to the public and sits at the entrance to Ashmore Hall, which served for many years as the college of health professions. Each plant features a unique QR code linking students to historical texts through a QR code phone app.

The idea first took shape in 2012 as an homage to the Sibbald Physic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland, planted by a pair of physicians in 1670.

Work got underway last fall on new brickwork, landscaping and plantings to give the space in front of the hall a fresh facelift. Though it features seedlings and saplings now, the area should be abundant with herbal foliage come spring.

Olive trees, rosemary, parsley, castor beans, bay laurel, butcher's broom, pomegranates, horehound – each plant in the garden has played a significant role in history not only as something people would consume, but would prize for its healing properties.

"I've always wondered which came first? Many of these herbs we know in a culinary sense but were they used as food first and later for medicine or the other way around?" Schretter wondered.

Elizabeth Blackwell was a prolific botanist illustrator in Scotland whose work during the 18th century helped expand herbalism abroad. She wrote about the healing properties of rosemary and praised the plant for the ways it "is good for the affections for the head and nerves, and strengthens sight and memory."

Her writings are one of four distinct herbal eras the garden references which include texts on medicinal plants grown by the Greeks and Romans from 300 B.C. to 100 A.D., the European herbalists of the 16th and 17th centuries, and modern herbalists from the 20th century and later.

Like other arboretum gardens, each plant is specially labeled; however, in the Physic Garden, labels also include a special QR code which can be accessed with a free phone app.

The QR codes link to academic writings of each plant and delve deeper into how they have played an important role in the history of medicine.

It's a unique way to draw students in and make learning fun, Schretter said, giving them a closer look at plants and trees that have been studied for centuries, a search for knowledge which continues today.

"There are a lot of important plants that we don't have any synthetic substitutes for yet," Schretter added. "People have been using plants as medicines for a long time and we're still just discovering medicines from plants now."