UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Instead of just looking at art at this year's Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, try wandering inside some.

The AT&T medieval garden at the Penn State Horticulture Trial Gardens -- a recreated garden based on medieval paintings and tapestries -- will be open throughout the festival, with special events planned on Sunday, July 15 from 2:30 to 5 p.m. The garden is located on the corner of Bigler Road and Park Avenue.

On Sunday, visitors can taste foods similar to those of the Middle Ages made from plants harvested from the garden, take a garden tour with an herbalist and watch craft demonstrations related to medieval plant uses, such as the making of salves, household cleaners and hand creams.

"The garden is really a representation of several different types of period gardens," says Martin McGann, assistant professor of landscape contracting in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. "We use the gardens to display many of the plants that would have been grown and used during this period. Some of the plants people will recognize as weeds, but during the medieval period they were considered very useful."

McGann designed the garden in three sections: a garden of contemplation, a kitchen garden for household and medicinal plants and a pleasure ground with lawn and benches for recreation and socializing. The garden was built by students in the landscape contracting program and is maintained by volunteers.

Representations of medieval architectural design include an arbor, a wattle fence and a diamond fence made of saplings. McGann chose maple for the wattle, rather than the more authentic and durable chestnut or hazel, so the fence could be constructed from local wood.

"No gardening instructions exist for medieval gardens, so we've had to glean ideas from paintings," McGann explains. "The medieval period lasted from 500 to 1450, so there isn't one representative garden style for 950 years of garden development. Even with the lack of period garden designs, we can still incorporate many of the garden elements. We can copy features that evidence suggests existed in these gardens, such as arbors, 'raised turf' benches, raised beds and a central water feature.

"The plants, though, are the most interesting part of the garden. What is very surprising is the number of these medieval plants that are still available today. Reading about their uses gives an interesting insight into the how people lived back then."

For more information, or to volunteer at the garden, contact Martin McGann at 814-863-7595 or mrm19@psu.edu.

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EDITORS: Martin McGann can be reached at 814-863-7595.

Contacts:

Kim Dionis KDionis@psu.edu 814-863-2703 814-865-1068 fax