Pharmacopoeia

Derek Jarman (1942–1994) was a prominent British filmmaker, artist, writer, and activist. Known for his avant-garde film-making, Jarman was openly gay and a prominent gay rights campaigner. In 1986, he was diagnosed as HIV positive. 

Around the time of his diagnosis, Jarman purchased Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the shingle beach of Dungeness, Kent. This became his home and creative space. He cultivated a unique garden around the cottage, using local plants, driftwood, and found objects. The garden became a "pharmacopoeia". Historically, a pharmacopoeia was a book detailing the medicinal uses of plants and how to combine them for remedies. For Jarman, his garden becomes a source of solace. His reflections on life there are extensively documented in his books, particularly Pharmacopoeia and Modern Nature. Pharmacopoeia is what I’ve just read, and thoroughly enjoyed. It’s made up of his journal entries, poems, and extracts from his other published works. We follow the rhythm of his days spent in this bleak and grey landscape where Jarman still managed to create an oasis (he writes that it was the bleakness that made him fall in love with the place).

There is a tinge of sadness about his limited time, and the many friends he has already lost. He knows the garden will not heal him but watching the plants spring up is thrilling, and fills him with hope. (“I sat by the front door wafted by the clove-scented pinks, it is an idyll…I am so in love with the place please God I see another year”)

“A gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end. A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours, lunch breaks, the last bus home. As you walk in the garden you pass into this time - the moment of entering can never be remembered. Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer."

Jarman died of AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 52. The cottage and its unique garden - a significant part of his legacy - is now open to the public.