A Berlin garden of flavorsome herbs revives a monastic health tradition
from the Middle Ages
[August 22, 2025]
By FANNY BRODERSEN
BERLIN (AP) — In a secluded lot next to a former gasworks in suburban
Berlin, Martin Rötzel is breathing new life into a tradition of
centuries past: the monastery garden.
Rötzel's Monk Garden is home to between 150 and 200 types of herbs,
leaves and trees including many that are unlikely to be found at any
German supermarket. There are numerous varieties of mint, oregano and
cilantro, hyssop and New Zealand spinach, four-leaf sorrel, yarrow and a
local variety of tarragon.
Rötzel has built Monk Garden as a business since 2022, delivering to
high-end restaurants that want flavorsome local plants for their dishes.
It also organizes “wild herb walks” and workshops showing people how to
make skin cream, wine and other items from the plants.
Packed into about 2,000 square meters (21,530 square feet) in
Marienfelde, on Berlin’s southern edge, each of the plants has its own
flavors and tangs and, in many cases, medicinal properties.
Rötzel, a trained hotelier who also has worked as a dancer, said his
knowledge of plants came from his father, while his passion for them
goes back to the age of 4 or 5 when he started collecting wild herbs.
During an illness 13 years ago, he deepened his knowledge of herbs and
made teas that he said helped him regain his health. He also set up a
medicinal monastic garden next to a church in the German capital,
mirroring those grown in the Middle Ages to provide plants for food and
healing.
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Visitors attend a joint meal at Martin Roetzel's 'The Monk Garden'
in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Fanny Brodersen)
 “At some point, the knowledge was
lost,” which was exacerbated by “the industrialization of food,"
Rötzel said. These days, “something like 99% of people don't know a
single name of a plant."
Rötzel has used his garden to counter that loss since he opened Monk
Garden. In addition to supplying restaurants, there are occasional
dinners in the garden bringing people together at a table in the
middle of the herbs. Five courses are each accompanied by a
different herbal tea.
After a first course of crayfish and peas with basil, diner Britta
Rosenthal said she wanted to find out “what herbs can do” and
“perhaps to become a bit more courageous preparing food, not just
with pepper, salt and paprika but also with green fresh stuff.”
Rötzel said he enjoys reviving people's memories of flavors past.
“Many people, above all older generations, grew up in a way that
they still know some things that no longer exist today," he said.
“It's a pleasure for me when people remember something really
special.”
___
Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
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