The WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden

Where do medicines come from? Many medicines that we use 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, a malaria treatment, comes from sweet wormwood.
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We have built 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, or a link to herbalism. 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 medicines made from 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. 

A wide angle view of our on-campus medicinal garden

Where is it…

You can find our garden outside of LifeSpace Gallery in the Wellcome Trust Building entrance of the School of Life Sciences. This is across from the Whitehall Theatre. There is a public walk way through campus directly past the garden. 
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Previously this area was grassed over and not used in a meaningful way and we wanted to change this and bring this area of campus to life. As well as being a nice looking area of campus to visit, the goal of the garden is also to increase awareness of the drug discovery research going on. The garden also provides a good anchor for getting people aware of the creative corner of campus as they will also pass by the Lifespace Gallery.
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.
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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.
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In an age of ‘Green Prescribing’ becoming more widly known of, our garden provides a safe and calming space for the public to enjoy as well as get invovled and learn about the medicine making going on inside our builidings and around the world.
A copper sculture nestled within some St. John's Wort plants
A blue sign for foxgloves, with 2 plants with pink and white flowers in the background

Discover Our Plants…

Visiting the garden or just curious? Find out all about the plants we have in our garden here:

Black Elderflower

Broom

Foxglove

Garlic

Jasmine

Lady’s Mantle

Lungwort

Marigold

Periwinkle

Poppy

Snowdrop

St Johns Wort

Sweet Wormwood

Thyme

Willow

Yew

Although not a medicinal plant, we have a cherry tree in our garden which was planted to commemorate Yuji Satio, a former member of the MRC unit, who tragically passed away in 2001.

Explore our Offshoots…

This is a joint project between the team within WCAIR and the University of Dundee Botanic Gardens. The Curator of the Botanic Gardens, Kevin Frediani is working closely with the WCAIR team.
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Not only are we working with the Botanic Gardens but so many other links have been created across Dundee. We are excited to be working with Dundee Science Centre in their creation of their Sensory Garden. Many of the medicinal plants which will be going into our garden will be going into theirs too. Their garden will also feature more plants that have a sensory aspect to them such as their smell or feel.
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We also worked with Hospitalfield house to install a medicinal plant sectino of their historic walled garden. This was part of the 2021 Beer and Berries Festival. The public were involved with the planting of the garden plot. We also hosted a talk all about the garden project as well as doing some fun science experiments with berries for the audience to see!
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We also worked with Dundee Museum of Transport to help them develop their own sensory garden project. They have unused land that they have turned into a beautiful sitting area with lots of sensory and medicinal plants growing. This is another great collaboration that the project has offered us.
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We are excited for the garden to be spreading all over the city and for all these different communities to be able to find out more about the world of medicinal plants and about what is going on with WCAIR.“
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2 adult and 2 children planting plants in a garden
Blue white and black shapes cut out of paper

Art Collaborations…

We wanted to make sure that the garden is always going to look special even during the winter months when the colourful plants arent around. We approached the coordinators of the Level 3 undergraduate module ‘Art Science and Visual Thinking’. Two creative young artists have developed work for the garden.

Chloe Fitzpatrick is creating pill-like structures to be installed in the raised beds of the garden. The peice is called ‘Streptomyces’. Her work linked together with the biodiversity of the garden as well as the drug discovery work going on inside the building behind the garden. She has created many beautiful pieces of development artwork as well.

Joslyn Lundie has created a sculpture consisting of three copper cages called ‘Telling Yellow’. These are going to be located in the raised beds over the St Johns Wort plant. They are representative of her struggles with depression and anxiety. The St Johns Wort plant is commonly used as a mild anti-anxiety medication. The peice symbolises that whatever struggles life may bring we are all able to flourish and seek a way of ‘Luminosity’ in our lives as the poem ‘Telling Yellow’ by Michael Longley suggests.

Watch our Videos…

We also have lots of exciting video content you can watch! We are delighted to have been able to be a part of different local festivals. Our researchers and experts who work on the garden have been joined by externals to chat about different aspects of their research and how the garden will help to educate others on what is going on inside our buildings. Check out our event recordings and digital story videos below.

A New Creative Corner of Campus – Dundee Womens Festival 2022

We spoke with Cicely Farrer, Amy Jones and Irene Hallyburton about their invovlement in LifeSpace and The WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden. Each of these women have been key to helping shape both LifeSpace and The WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden.

LifeSpace, Dundee’s local art science gallery has been running as a collaboration between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and the School of Life Sciences since 2014, and the WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden was created in 2021. Watch our event recording and meet the women who have transformed this space into what it is today. Find out how the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research is using this space to combine art and gardening into an exciting space for discussions about our drug discovery work.

HERbology and Health: Lady’s Mantle to Foxglove – Dundee Womens Festival 2021

Did you miss our live event during Dundee Women’s Festival? Not to worry as we have uploaded it for you on YouTube!

Explore with our researchers and experts all about Medicinal Plants and how some plants have been used within researching different areas of women’s health.

We were delighted to have our own researcher Irene Hallyburton for this event joined by Clare Reany from the Dundee Botanic Gardens as well as Kate Robinson who is the Head Gardener at Hospitalfield Arbroath.

We had so many great questions however we were not able to answer them all in the time we had so if you watch the event and think of any please comment on the video or tweet us @WCAIRDundee.

The WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden – Dundee Science Festival

As part of the 2020 Dundee Science Festival, the Medicinal Garden Team held an online discussion event.

We had Irene Hallyburton and Kevin Frediani who work directly on the project and we also had Andrew Mtewa streaming live from Malawi who brought his expertise on natural products with medical values.

If you were hoping to come along but couldn’t make it. We will be putting the recording of the event on our Youtube Channel. This link will be linked here when made available. It will also be posted on our social media so to keep in the loop follow us by clicking the link below or following us on Twitter @WCAIRDundee.

Our story about the WeeCAIR Medicinal Garden – Digital Story

We have created a short digital story all about the history of medicinal plants and how they relate to Dundee. Ailsa Mackintosh, a member of the garden team, has put together this digital story as part of our wider Digital Storytelling project with you can check out here.

Illustraion women wearing a mask watering foxglove and ladys mantle plants
Illustration by Hayley Wells - @hwillustrator.

Do our Activities and Games!

Check them out here!

For Dundee Women’s Festival, we developed some fun and simple activities available for all to enjoy! We’ve created colouring in sheets as well as a scavenger hunt and a word search.

Don’t forget to check out our garden library too where you can read the books suggested by our team. They used these books and websites to understand more about medicinal plants which impacted which ones those chose to put into our garden.

Check out the garden's Instagram page.

Find out more about the Dundee Botanic Gardens.

Like this art? Find out more.