Ivy Earrings

Each of the three gardens has its own character. The Cuxa Cloister Garth Garden is the Museum’s main ornamental garden. The plan is typically medieval, but both medieval species and modern garden plants are grown to provide color and scent from springtime through fall. The Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden holds one of the most specialized plant collections in the world, organized by use (i.e., magical, medicinal, culinary). It is a challenging garden, because the plants grouped together under such headings may have very different horticultural requirements. Here you can see rare species that you won’t see elsewhere, such as mandrake or henbane. You may also learn to appreciate very ordinary plants: ground ivy is considered to be a common weed, but it has a place of honor in the bed of Magical Plants in Bonnefont Garden. Trie Cloister Garden, home to a collection of plants native to European meadows, woodlands, and stream banks, evokes the flowering grounds of medieval millefleurs tapestries.

A garden tour can be a gratifying sensory experience, and an intellectually stimulating one, for both visitors and lecturers. Many people have an immediate response to plants, and a natural curiosity about them. Time spent in the gardens can help visitors to connect with the medieval past presented in the galleries. Seeing the plants represented in the collection also living and growing outside in the gardens is one of the perennial pleasures of a visit to The Cloisters.

The gardens inspire curiosity and enthusiasm as well as providing quiet enjoyment. People have been known to develop a profound attachment to favorite plants, such as the espaliered pear and the beloved quince trees, which have grown at The Cloisters since the 1950s and are now an icon of the Museum. The popular “Garden Days at The Cloisters,” a themed event held the first weekend in June, attracts many visitors each year.

The position of horticulturist at The Cloisters is unique. The job is physical and sensory as well as intellectually gratifying. It entails finding, planting, growing, researching, and interpreting hundreds of plants. The work changes with the seasons, from daily planting and sowing in the spring to putting the gardens to bed for the winter. In a given season, the weather, not the gardeners, often determines which plants flourish and which decline.

Year- round, The Cloisters is a truly special place to work and visit.