The WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden

Description

A medicinal garden on campus. Members of the team contribute to the upkeep and installation of the garden and provide scientific content for the signage.

'Where do medicines come from? Many medicines that are used today come from the active ingredients found in plants that would have been used in traditional herbal remedies. The well-known painkiller, aspirin comes from willow bark, and artemisinins the malaria treatment, comes from sweet wormwood.

We are creating a public garden with many of these types of plants. All the plants in the garden have an active ingredient which medicine is made from. Our garden shows the history of medicine as well as how plants today are still being researched to help create new medicines. Although we don’t focus primarily on natural products, many of our visiting students from disease-endemic countries do. Some of them work in identifying the active ingredients within native plants. Our garden will help to give an insight into the ground-breaking work that goes on within the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research and provide a beautiful spot for passers-by to enjoy and recharge and get inspired by.

Our garden will be located outside of LifeSpace Gallery. We hope that the garden will help bring this area of campus to life. It will increase awareness of the research going on and also the gallery too.

We hope the garden will provide a relatable starting point for people to understand how science affects everyone’s lives. We also hope it might spark an interest in finding out more about the science and how to grow your own herbal garden.

Our scientists will gain an opportunity to connect with communities. We’re hoping the garden will help them build relationships and learn from our communities and make new friends.'

Period	2020 → 2022
Degree of Recognition	Local