WOMEN'S HERB GARDENS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11784, 23 August 1916, Page 4

WOMEN'S HERB GARDENS.

The wai, says the London " Daily Mail," is gradually teaching the British people a salutary lesson, the importance of producing things for themselves. Among tho many industries which the ingenious activity of the Hun is bringing back to our land is the cultivation of medicinal herbs. The old physic garden was part and parcel of EnglislTcountrv life, like the still-room in days before it became merely a place where tea was given out and dainty teatables prepared. All our large houses were equipped with it. And here and there an old herb garden still remains as that " spacious, illustrious physicko garden, beautifully walled and gated " at, Oxford, or Hans Sloane's delightful Apothecaries Garden in Chelsea, where still may be found in these tumultuous clays that sense of repose and communion with the past which give such enchantment to there silent closes. Herb-growing died out in the nineteenth century, slowly at first, swiftly afterwards, before the impact cf foreign competition. And to-dnv most m0d:..;.,.,i d:..;.,.,i ), ...i-, y nvn .-."irce and some are unprocurable. Belladonna root, to take one el iiic scarcest, lias risen from <fos a cwt to 400s. Yot most of the plants from which such dm as as menthol, i thymol, strychnine, digitalis, atropine I and hyoscyamine are made have been grown and can bo grown in this conntry. It would be a work of true pat- . riotism to restore their culture.