One of the newest additions to the Walled Garden is our Medicinal Plant Collection. This collection was identified as a key group of plants that we wished to cultivate when we were working with Kim Wilkie on the Garden’s Development Plan. The collection is designed to showcase how important plants are in modern clinical medicine. Growing in this area of the Garden are plants that (either directly or indirectly) provide us with clinically effective pharmaceuticals. This includes plants such as Digitalis lanata from which we isolate digoxin, a drug used to treat heart arrhythmias. Many plants provide us with a key intermediate that is transformed by chemical synthesis into the currently used treatment. Etoposide, a semi-synthetic derivative of a substance extracted from Podophyllum hexandrum is used to treat testicular and lung cancers. Some other pharmaceuticals owe their existence less directly to plants but nonetheless plants were pivotal to their discovery. The local anaesthetic lidocaine was developed after scientists isolated a molecule called gramine from barley (Hordeum vulgare) in the 1930s. The plants grown here are grouped according to which organ or system of the body they act on. For example all the plants that represent treatments to do with the cardiovascular system are grown together in one bed. Sustainable production of medicinal plants is essential and indeed many are now grown commercially as crop plants. Where applicable we are demonstrating this here on a smaller scale..