Jardim dos Simples - Ponte de Lima

The Jardim dos Simples, also known as the Jardim dos Cheiros and the Jardim dos Terceiros , is located next to the Terceiros Museum in Ponte de Lima and is housed in two religious houses linked to the Franciscan Order: the Convento de Santo António dos Capuchos and the building of the Ordem Terceira de São Francisco.

This garden is the result of the 2002 restoration , with the help of landscape architect Francisco Caldeira Cabral, of the old monastery garden on the site, based on 19th century drawings and an early 20th century photograph, which show a garden space surrounded by a wall with a central pond.

The monastery gardens were places for contemplation and for growing plants with medicinal and aromatic properties, which led the municipality of Limiana to re-establish a "garden of the simple" in the same place, a name given to these spaces since the Middle Ages, where the "simple ones of vegetable origin" were grown, that is, medicinal plants used for therapeutic purposes.

The Jardim dos Simples is divided into three different cultivation areas: the central area around the pond with medicinal plants , followed by the scented garden with aromatic plants and, on either side, the herb garden with kitchen plants.

Willem Vandenameele