HERBARIA
Herbaria is a quiet, atmospheric walk through gardens and hidden closes, exploring the bond between plants, women’s knowledge, and the stories Edinburgh tried to forget.
Here we speak of the women accused of witchcraft: healers, midwives and herbalists whose understanding of remedies and the natural world was often the reason they were feared.
But Herbaria also celebrates the women who shaped Edinburgh’s history — scholars, pioneers, reformers — whose contributions changed the city and sometimes the world, yet rarely appear in official narratives.
Through plants, symbols, and overlooked corners, this tour reconnects their stories, revealing how women’s wisdom influenced medicine, belief, community care and daily survival.
No theatrics, no exaggerations: just real history, real women, and the botanical threads that link their lives across the centuries.
HIDDEN BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE
Explore plants, remedies and symbols woven into Edinburgh’s everyday life.
Learn how botanical wisdom shaped healing, survival and early science.
WOMEN HISTORY FORGOT
Hear the stories of healers, midwives, botanists and thinkers erased from official records.
Women who shaped the city — but whose names rarely appear in mainstream history.
BEYOND WITCHCRAFT MYTHS
Understand the real causes behind witchcraft accusations — fear, power and the suppression of knowledge —
without theatrics or exaggeration.
WHAT YOU WILL SEE & LEARN
During Herbaria, you’ll explore how plants shaped Edinburgh’s daily life, community care and early medicine. You’ll learn how botanical knowledge travelled through generations of women — from healers and midwives to early scientists — and why their stories disappeared from official history.
You’ll see hidden gardens, quiet closes, stone carvings, medicinal plants, and places connected to real women who influenced the city far beyond what the archives recorded.
No dramatization, just the real context behind herbal practices, repression, belief and the beginnings of scientific thought.