GARDENS IN BOOKS BOUND

GARDENS IN BOOKS BOUND

Knowledge of medicinal plants is one of the key achievements in the history of humanity: after millennia of helping care for human health, it stood at the birth of medicine and botany as separate sciences. In order to preserve and transfer this knowledge, people have been creating herbals and herbaria. This exhibition is dedicated to them.

The exhibition is divided in two parts. The first, exterior part is found in the park of the chateau. Panels located there will tell you what can be found in herbals and herbaria. This is an opportunity to learn more about the history, origin, and various types of herbals. You will be able to glance into the world of old physic gardens and learn how herbals function in the current digital age.

The external part of the exhibition is supplemented by a show bed with medicinal plants that appear in the two herbaria which were the primary focus of the project: the Broumov herbarium created by Johann Brehe of Überlingen in 1595 and Boccius’s herbarium made Norbertus Boccius, prior of the Valtice monastery of the Brothers of Mercy around 1766.

The second part of the exhibition will take you to the round entrance hall of Kačina. In this unique space, you can admire the original copies of the abovementioned herbaria but also various herbals or books on botany associated with the Chotek library in Kačina and other rare specimens from the collections of the National Museum of Agriculture. Come and discover with us the stories of medicinal plants, which have been part of human life since time immemorial. Let us remind ourselves what they meant to us in the past and what they can offer today.