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From our beginnings, Dilston Physic Garden owes its existence to visionary individuals who believe in the power of medicinal plants, and the importance of sharing that knowledge. Their generosity has helped protect this sanctuary and what we do, for 30 years. Please help preserve it for the current and future generations.
Dilston Physic Garden is a dedicated enterprise educating on the awareness of medicinal plants for health and medicine. It provides gardening and wild-green-space for the physical and mental wellbeing of the community, and for the protection of biodiversity. As a registered charity receiving no central funding we rely heavily upon donations from the public in order to exist.
As an educational charity, our vision is to deepen public and educational engagement with the natural world to enhance awareness of biodiversity’s vital essential role, and to educate on the benefits of medicinal plants for health, medicine and drug discovery.
With the invaluable support of a loyal physic garden friend, whose recent generous donation facilitated the beginning of a fundraising strategy, we see donations from the public as an essential part of our future. Your donation, no matter how small, will help us to support long-term wellness in the community and in the environment through our dedicated projects.
What we do
We invite audiences to learn about the vital role of edible medicinal plants and plant medicine. Medicinal plants are often forgotten in the west but they not only enhance health, they profoundly support disease prevention, improving the immune, respiratory, circulatory, and cardiovascular systems, while also improving mental wellbeing and supporting brain health.
Despite plant medicine’s proven efficacy in treating a range of common conditions such as digestive problems, skin disorders, colds and flu, insomnia, anxiety, and depression, plant medicine also remains underutilised in the UK. Its holistic approach addresses the root cause of disease, and of those studied plant medicine is shown to be as effective as conventional drugs but carry fewer if any side effects such as addiction.
Dilston Physic Garden is dedicated to bridging the gap between plant and general medicine by highlighting the scientific evidence behind plant medicine. Our research includes controlled trials to validate plant medicine for conditions like memory issues and insomnia, demonstrating its effectiveness compared to single-drug treatments with minimal side effects.
Our 2-acre natural-habitat garden not only provides a place for wellness in the community but is a space that’s supporting the ecological system in its own right – read more.
Learn more about how your donation will help us to continue to achieve these aims, with the initiatives below.
How Your Donation Will Help
The garden has a number of ongoing initiatives that we are working to fund. Your donation will make a huge difference to enabling these initiatives to happen. If you do choose to donate today, thank you! And if there’ a certain project that you wish to support, please do let us know by email and we shall ensure your donation is allocated to this fund.
Our community gardening for wellbeing hub is inspired by the many benefits we’ve seen volunteer gardening bring to people’s lives over the years. Whether you’re looking to enjoy the physical and mental benefits of working outdoors, expand your social connections in a relaxed and supportive environment, or simply want to contribute to a meaningful cause, our community gardening offers something special for everyone. We are hugely grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund that has enabled the continuation of this wellbeing hub into 2026.
Learn more about our other current projects below.
Education is at the core of who we are as a charity. Following on from a successful pilot in schools, we need to develop our program of workshops and outreach education.
If children get access to information and hands-on experiences with herbs and learn about their wide-ranging benefits, the next generation could transform their life-long health, and so the health of the nation.
We are developing an educational game, and would like to create structured, informative, material linked with schools’ PCSHE curricula, and material that can be taught in its own right alongside Maths and English in schools.
Pupils report having access to our workshops has benefits to their physical and mental wellbeing, such as increased concentration, self-nurturing, relaxation, and enjoyment in the natural world.
Our educational spaces access and garden facilities are limited and are dictated by weather conditions. Our parking lane and paths are unsurfaced and unsuitable for wheelchairs, our classroom and WC cannot be accessed by wheel chairs, nor be utilised during the winter months due to lack of insulation, hot water and heating, and our outdoor community and group spaces are limited. Improvements to these facilities will allow us to better achieve our mission of education and of providing a place year-round for wellbeing for all community visitors, groups, volunteers, school visits and wellness workshops.
Our improvement plan includes: surfacing the car park, lane and pathways, insulating the current water supply and installing a boiler for hot water and heating in our Herbology House classroom, upgrading and insulating the current WC and installing utilities to provide hot water and lighting, alongside providing access, facilities and amenities for all to visit the garden, WC and Herbology House classroom.
Watering is key to growing plants well, this not only means providing the water our garden needs, but using it wisely.
To save time and labour in the often dry conditions we can experience and for our bigger and more water-demanding areas we would like to install a drip irrigation system. This system is the most water-efficient way to irrigate many different plants and will ensure we keep the garden envrionmentally green and blooming in the more frequent longer dry spells.
At Dilston Physic Garden, our roots are deeply embedded in scientific research. Our mission is to inspire, educate and carry out research , helping to bridge the gap between the wisdom of traditional plant medicine and the rigor of modern mainstream medicine. While we honour and incorporate alternative approaches, it is the science that forms the foundation of our teachings and guides our, and the medical profession’s, exploration of plant medicine.
Our educational programmes are designed to empower individuals with evidence-based knowledge, ensuring that every step taken in the garden is one supported by research.
With funding we can undertake more scientific research trials to widen the knowledge base and people’s understanding of plant medicine—one that is both respected by tradition and validated by science. Read more on our scientific research here.
Support Our Current Projects
Write `I Confirm` below to confirm that you are a UK tax payer and wish Dilston Physic Garden to claim Gift Aid on all donations you have made in the last four years and any future donations you make.

What is Gift Aid?
Gift Aid is a scheme run by the government that enables charities to increase the value of donations made by reclaiming basic rate tax that has been paid on the gift. At the moment, we can claim 25p per £1 donated, so on a gift of £100, we will actually receive an extra £25, at no cost to the donor, which we then use to fund Dilston Physic Garden’s work.
To qualify for Gift Aid, you need to be a UK taxpayer and have paid enough tax to cover the amount of tax reclaimed by all charities on all your donations for each tax year (6th April one year to 5th April the next).
In order for Dilston Physic Garden to be able to claim Gift Aid on your donations, we need to have a valid Gift Aid Declaration from you. You can complete a Gift Aid declaration online, this is an automated form which you can complete at ‘check out’ each time you make a donation.