A brick-based Victorian glasshouse with arched windows, half hidden by green leaves

Botanicals

The physic garden behind the shop

A walled yard of a hundred and twenty plants, laid out the way a Victorian pharmacist kept his beds.

Thirty-four of the plants end up in a bottle.

When we took on number fourteen, the cellar still held the shop’s copy of the 1885 British Pharmacopoeia, with pencilled notes in the margins about what grew in the yard. Ravi replanted from those notes: angelica and wormwood in the cool north bed, thyme and rosemary against the warm south wall, roses over the back gate.

What we cannot grow — juniper, orris, Seville orange, gentian — we buy from growers we have met, and we list every one of them below, drawer by drawer, the way the old shop labelled its jars.

The drawer labels

Eight botanicals that shape the range

Drawer 01

Juniperus communis

Juniper

Pine, resin and the backbone of every gin

Grown: Hand-sorted berries from the Tuscan hills
Bottled in: All four gins

Drawer 02

Angelica archangelica

Angelica

A dry, musky root that holds the flowers together

Grown: Our north bed, roots lifted in November
Bottled in: No. 1 · Rose

Drawer 03

Thymus citriodorus

Lemon thyme

Soft lemon over a green, savoury herb

Grown: Along our south wall
Bottled in: No. 1

Drawer 04

Rosa damascena

Damask rose

Honeyed petals, picked in June at first light

Grown: The rose arch by the back gate
Bottled in: Rose and Angelica

Drawer 05

Citrus aurantium

Seville orange

Bitter peel with a long, bright finish

Grown: Andalucía, arriving each January
Bottled in: Bergamot · Aperitivo

Drawer 06

Artemisia absinthium

Wormwood

Green and bitter, the old apothecary’s tonic

Grown: Our dry gravel bed
Bottled in: Bitters · Vermouth

Drawer 07

Gentiana lutea

Gentian

Deep, clean bitterness for aperitifs

Grown: Root from the Auvergne uplands
Bottled in: Aperitivo · Bitters

Drawer 08

Glycyrrhiza glabra

Liquorice

Sweet anise warmth without sugar

Grown: Root from Pontefract, twenty miles away
Bottled in: Old Tom

The picking year

When each plant comes in

JanuarySeville oranges arrive; we cut the peel the same week, by hand, at the shop counter.
AprilAngelica stems are cut and the first lemon thyme comes off the south wall.
JuneDamask roses are picked at first light for the Rose and Angelica run.
JulyThe main cut: chamomile, rosemary and lemon thyme, dried on racks in the old stockroom.
SeptemberWormwood tops and the first quince for the Garden Vermouth.
NovemberAngelica and orris roots are lifted, washed and laid down to dry over winter.