The monastic herb garden was part of the infirmary, and it was kept as a place of prayer as much as of work. Two kinds of book tell us what grew there and how it was handled. A short Latin poem written in a monastery in the ninth century walks through a small garden bed by bed and sings of more than twenty plants in turn. A herbal written in a monastery in the twelfth century describes hundreds of plants, trees, and stones, setting each within the order of creation.

The poem’s garden is a modest one, the kind a single brother could keep. Among its plants are sage, rue, southernwood, wormwood, horehound, fennel, iris, lovage, chervil, white lily, clary, mint, pennyroyal, celery, betony, agrimony, catmint, radish, gourd, melon, and rose. The twelfth-century herbal adds many more, among them yarrow, mugwort, lavender, tansy, hyssop, and thyme. These are the names of plants only. What the old books said about their use belongs to their own time, and we do not repeat it here.

The monastery did every step of the work itself. It grew the plants from seed or cuttings in beds kept beside the infirmary. It gathered them by hand, usually on a dry morning once the dew had gone, taking leaves before flowering and flowers when they had just opened. It dried them in the shade, tied in small bundles and hung from the beams of an airy room, or spread thinly on cloths and turned each day, until they crumbled between the fingers. It stored the dried herbs in closed jars and boxes, away from the light, each marked with its name. And when they were wanted, it prepared them.

The usual preparation was simple. For leaves and flowers, a measure of the dried herb was placed in a vessel, covered with water just off the boil, and left to stand, covered, for some minutes before being strained. For roots, seeds, and bark, the plant was simmered gently in water for longer, until the water had taken up its color and scent. The drink was served warm, often with a little honey. These are the methods of any household kitchen, and the monastery used them in the same way.

The work of the garden followed the year. In late winter the beds were dug and manured and the paths cleared; in spring the seed was sown and the young plants set out in rows; through the summer the brother weeded, watered from a well or cistern nearby, and tied up what grew too tall. In autumn the last leaves and the seeds were gathered, the roots lifted, and the beds covered against the frost. The poem describes this labor without hurry, as a brother who had blistered his own hands at it.

The garden was not merely useful. Monastic writers saw it as a small image of Paradise, enclosed and ordered, and as an extension of the cloister in which the brothers prayed. To work in it was to take part in the care of creation; to bring its fruits to the sick was to carry the order of the garden into the sickroom. The poem itself ends not with a list but with a dedication, offering the little garden as a gift of love.

At IHS Bethlehem Church, the herb garden stops at growing herbs and giving them away as tea. We do not speak of what they do for the body. When we give them, we add only these words: a drink made according to the monastic tradition.