Healing with Plants at Villers-la-Ville

In the shadow of the abbey walls, sheltered from wind and frost, lay the hortus conclusus — the enclosed garden. Here grew rows of lavender, sage, thyme and rosemary alongside rarer plants such as valerian, foxglove and monkshood. Every plant had its place, every herb its purpose. The monks knew the difference between remedy and poison, and that difference often lay in the dosage.

The brother apothecary, always the most learned in the community, kept a herbarium in which every plant was precisely described: when to pick, how to dry, in what proportions to blend. This book was passed down from generation to generation, always supplemented with new discoveries.

The Cistercians lived by the rule of silence — speech was limited to the strictly necessary. But in the herb garden the monks worked side by side, and their knowledge was transmitted through practice: watching how the master cut a root, feeling when a leaf was ripe, smelling when a decoction had reached the right strength.

The people from the surrounding villages came to the abbey gate when they were ill. The monks refused no one — farmer or nobleman, poor or rich. They made ointments for skin ailments, teas for fevers and compresses for swellings. In return they asked nothing, save a prayer.

The abbey was destroyed during the French Revolution, but the knowledge was not lost. In the nineteenth century botanists began to document the plants still growing in the ruins — descendants of the original monastic gardens. Today the herb garden has been partly restored and visitors can see the same plants that the monks cultivated eight hundred years ago.

It is a quiet place, sheltered by ancient walls, where the scent of lavender and sage still hangs in the air. Those who walk through it are literally following in the footsteps of men who believed the earth contains everything a person needs to heal — if only you know where to look.