The medieval monastic gardens of Øm Abbey, Denmark

The monastic gardens is often identified as a symbol of monastic medical knowledge. However, gardens around monasteries are more than that. Medieval monasteries functioned as self-sufficient units and had a wide variety of gardens close by. In the monastic garden crops were grown for consumption, for making beverages, to use as insecticide, spices, textiles and rope as well as medicine and from the gardens came flowers to decorate the church during the liturgical calendar.
None monastic gardens from the Middle Ages have survived in northern Europe. It is necessary to gain information’s elsewhere from and with the help of archaeology, historical sources, plant macrofossils and pollen analysis’s it is possible to identify types of gardens and the landscape surrounding the monasteries.
This paper demonstrates how it is possible, through an interdisciplinary approach to get information’s of the gardens and surrounding landscape of the medieval Cistercian Abbey Øm in Denmark, AD 1172-1560.