'Green health' and wellness may sound like 21st-century ideas; but medieval people believed strongly that having access to gardens and plants was an essential part of taking care of themselves and others. My research plan, to explore the gardens, plants, and green space of buildings like castles and monasteries and records left by medieval people as well as plants living in the landscape today, can trace the ways in which the 'green' environment was used to maintain health. This project will bring different areas of research together to understand, how, why and in what ways medieval people used plants and gardens to stay healthy. Medieval Green Lives will investigate the ways people maintained their health across aristocratic, ordinary and religious communities in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England during the later medieval period (1100 - 1600 AD). I want to look at the roles of gardens in medieval health care by examining how these spaces were used in monasteries, castles and ordinary homes. I will review these alongside the written records of garden design and plant sharing, as well as living plants. Bringing together different parts of social and scientific archaeology, history and botany, this project examines 40 case-study sites from the Atlantic Isles (of Ireland and Britain); whose shared historic past is indicated by common buildings, plants and documents, each of which retained distinct regional differences. Interestingly, humans needing care is widely perceived as a necessary part of life - yet it's rarely explored in stories of the past. However, evidence of this is readily available: people's lives (actions, relationships and experiences) can be accessed through surviving material from this time e.g. artefacts, buildings and historic documents. Like today, people in the past entered into relationships with other people, places, plants and things. Here, these actions are understood as practices - ways of doing things that mean something. I want to access this 'doing' in its material and spatial form to fully understand what a healthy life might have been like. Focussing on 'the traces of things people did' with plants and gardens, I will seek to offer a new way of thinking about health in ordinary, religious and lay households e.g. why particular plants were included in gardens, why some gardens were enclosed with masonry or how medieval people liked to look at beautiful flowers as part of their healthy regimen. Some of these plants survive in our landscapes today, though surprisingly, these plants from the medieval period (green heritage) are ignored or forgotten at heritage sites across the UK and Europe. Often it is the conservation of medieval buildings or the stories of famous past people that are prioritised, not the outdoors element of the lifestyle. At many sites, walls are cleared of vegetation and lawns are perfectly manicured. This is completely at odds with how these places may have looked, smelled or felt in the medieval period. This ordering reduces biodiversity which is now more than ever important to challenging climate change. The plants that do survive are under-appreciated in terms of their contribution to biodiversity as well as their genetic importance to their own species. Highlighting the value of these surviving plants known as relicts is an important part of protecting green heritage. Engaging with different organisations including Cadw, Museum Wales, Heritage Council and Transport Infrastructure Ireland we will demonstrate through detailed survey how medieval heritage sites are and can become 'beacons for biodiversity' which responds to our own understandings of the health benefits of green space and its touristic value. If greater care and attention is given to relict plants and green spaces, heritage sites can become spaces of refuge for flora and fauna as well as 21st century people who need access to green space for their own wellbeing, just like medieval people already knew.