DENVER — At the Denver Botanic Gardens, there's an indoor world just as captivating as gardens themselves: the Helen Fowler Library, home to an extraordinary collection of rare books and historical archives.
Archivist Angela Naumov spread out books in the library's rare book reading room. Some of her favorites are “herbals,” historical books of peculiar remedies, hundreds of years old.
"The herbals contain some really fun, bizarre remedies that maybe we shouldn’t use today," Naumov said.
One of the herbals published in 1655 offers advice on everything from “resisting necromantic apparitions” to “reviving dying men.” Naumov’s work involves preserving these rare tomes, along with old seed catalogs, photographs, stamps and countless historical documents.
"There is neverending work," she said. "Plus, there are still boxes and boxes worth of stuff that hasn't been processed."
The library’s oldest book dates back to the 1500s – and visitors can read them.
"We’ll come back here for you, bring it to the reading room, and show you how to handle it," Naumov said.
Some books require more special handling than others.
"One of the interesting things we have in our collection is, potentially, we have arsenic in some of our older books," Naumov said. German and English bookmakers used arsenic to create beautiful green covers in the 1800s.
"As we know from history, arsenic poisoning is not fun," she added.
The archives also include meticulous records documenting the garden’s history. Occasionally, Naumov has to check on older documents to ensure their preservation.
“We have to make sure all of the archival boxes and folders haven’t decayed because that does happen,” she said.
The Denver Botanic Gardens are constantly changing, so there's always new work to do. It's work that Naumov loves, surrounded by centuries of history and endless material.
“Pretty good job security, I would say,” Naumov said.
The Helen Fowler Library is free and open to the public Tuesday through Sunday.