is located in Chester Springs, PA. The garden was researched, designed and planted by the Unit and was dedicated in 1987 on the site of the first Colonial Army Hospital funded by the Continental Congress in the colonies in 1777. The garden, which was recently renovated, includes many of the plants for medicinal use available locally in the 18th century. The list of plants was taken from a lecture on herbs given by Dr. William Shippen in 1765. In this lecture Dr. Shippen, a professor of anatomy and surgery at the College of Philadelphia, emphasized the beneficial nature of certain herbs. Dr. Shippen, a Philadelphia resident who was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland was appointed the director General of Military Hospitals in 1777. The doctors, nurses and assistants at Washington Hall would have been wholly familiar with the healing benefits of these herbs and would have used them to nurse the soldiers. 

Plan of the Garden

History of Yellow Springs

   The Leni-Lenape people named Yellow Springs prior to any European settlements. As the colonists in Philadelphia got word of the healing yellow waters many of them visited Yellow Springs to use the iron rich water for healing. By 1772 doctors were suggesting to their patients that the mineral springs be used for drinking and bathing.    

   Dr. Samuel Kennedy bought the springs in 1774. General George Washington retreated to the Yellow Springs Inn after the Battle of Brandywine. Here, he established temporary headquarters and later, during the encampment at Valley Forge, petitioned the Continental Congress to build a medical facility to improve the health of his army. Dr. Kennedy loaned a portion of his property to Congress for the construction of a hospital. The original building was begun in 1777 and completed in 1778. Called Washington Hall, it was the only hospital commissioned during the Revolutionary War and the first military facility.

     The Revolutionary War was fought with fires, cannons, swords, and bayonets that killed, maimed and wounded 1,000 Continental soldiers each year of the war. Disease killed nine times that number. As the men from the colonies gathered to fight, their germs mingled spreading typhus, tuberculoses, smallpox, and influenza. Unsanitary conditions bred typhoid and dysentery. Food shortages caused scurvy and malnutrition.

    Few medical practitioners in colonial times had formal education in medicine. Healing was learned by apprenticeships and the title “Doctor” was taken by those who wanted to practice. There was a shortage of doctors particularly in rural areas. The army medical department had problems from the beginning due to a shortage of trained personnel.

    Even if trained doctors were available, their training was woefully inadequate due to the taboos on dissection and incomplete understanding of the causes of diseases. Colonial medicine was unable to cure most ailments. Sometimes the patient’s condition would worsen due to treatment. Bloodletting was thought to be beneficial. Lancets and sometimes leeches were used to remove large amounts of blood from the sick. One common theory during colonial times was that the body could only hold one illness at a time. If a second illness entered, the first would leave. This inspired doctors to irritate the skin, called blistering, using all manner of noxious materials. Another method of ridding the body of illness was to induce the patient to vomit or purge his bowels.

    Because few colonists could afford doctors’ fees, they relied on home remedies. The herb garden was a necessary adjunct to health. A few homes had copies of Culpepper’s Herbal published in 1694 which was intended to bring the knowledge of the medicinal uses of plants to layman. Colonists learned from the Native Americans about what plants had healing properties. The Philadelphia Unit of the Herb Society of America planted an 18th century medicinal herb garden in 1987 at the hospital ruins. The site and garden were dedicated as a Revolutionary War Memorial during the “We the People 200” celebration of the 200th anniversary of the constitution.

Unit members in the 18th Century Medicianl Garden at Historic Yellow Springs

The Fragrant Garden at the John J. Tyler Arboretum

   was originally designed for the visually handicapped. It was one of the very first gardens in this country to be designed primarily for the blind. A letter from Helen Keller, received shortly after the garden construction was started in 1949, in reference to the Fragrant Garden stated, “Heartily I hope that this noble example may spur cities where the blind live throughout the country to plant special garden nooks for the pleasure and instruction in the wonders of nature.”

   The construction was completed in 1954, and the public dedication took place on May 22, 1954. The garden contains two terraces ranging in length from 65 feet to 100 feet, each with a stone wall over two feet high. Each of the terraces faces south, providing full sun on the herbs all day long. This fine exposure plus the high stone walls bordering each terrace providing excellent drainage insure an extremely healthy herb garden, providing blossoms and textures and pleasure from early May until late in the fall.

    In selecting herbs to be used in the garden, the emphasis has always been on the fragrance of each plant in foliage and the blossoms. Since herbs provide such interesting shades of grays and greens, and such varieties of leaf shapes and textures, it is very easy to provide a garden with such lovely herbs.

   The Philadelphia Unit was one of several groups that were involved in the early beginnings of this garden, and the Unit members have maintained the garden for over 40 years. Work begins early in April with the spring tidy-up, and each week all through the summer and late in the fall, many ladies form the Unit are working in the garden, keeping it at its loveliest.

Unit members at work in the Fragrant Garden at Tyler Arboretum

   The most recent redesigning of the garden was in 1981, and again, the emphasis was on using only fragrant herbs. Over 100 varieties of herbs are used in the garden, guaranteeing a continuing blooming from early May with the bulbs, through June and July with lavenders, alliums, dianthus, heliotrope, monarda, nigella, and basils, on into the fall with scented geraniums, oregano, salvias, mints, tagetes, to mention a few.

   Hardly a day passes by without many interested visitors enjoying the Fragrant Garden—little school children experiencing their first touch and smell tests, camera buffs photographing the man butterflies that enjoy the herbs, old and young having a wonderful time enjoying such a pretty place.

   Restful corner in the Fragrant Garden at Tyler Arboretum