## 2 Materials and Methods
### Methods  
The study was conducted from July 2019 to October 2020 in Taurage District in the territory of the Samogitia ethnographic region (Figure 1). The purpose of the study was explained to each interviewee and an informed consent form was signed prior to the interview. The study was conducted in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology [19]. Interviews were recorded and coded. The research was approved by the Bioethics Center of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (No. BEC-FF-17). The study surveyed 30 respondents of whom 27 provided ethnobotanical material (6 men, 21 women). The maintenance of home gardens and the use of cultivated plants for food and homemade medicines, like all traditional medicine in Lithuania, has been the occupation of women [12; 20]. At present, gardening in Lithuania is often the leisure time occupation of men of a respectable age; therefore, a larger than usual number of men were interviewed during this study. The term \"home garden\" is defined in this study as the entirety of naturally growing or cultivated plants grown for personal use for food and/or medicine in the area of residence. At the beginning of the study, information was gathered about the study area, getting to know the area, people and communication culture. Permission to conduct the study was obtained from local community leaders. A study guide was chosen, who knew people and the area and who identified the members of the target group growing medicinal plants in home gardens, using them for medical purposes and food. During the research, the guide's role was performed by a resident of Taurage, who had been engaged in herbal medicine and had excellent knowledge of folk medicine. The study group formation employed the \"snowball\" methodology, where one respondent recommends another member of the target group. The first meeting with the interviewed persons occurred in their home gardens. We returned to the same respondents once more to clarify the information received. The research method was a structured interview. It was carried out in two stages. During the first stage, using the prepared questionnaire, the researcher wrote down the answers to the questions. The prepared questionnaire consisted of 17 questions Questionnaire 1 (Supplementary Materials). The aim of the second stage was to gather as much information as possible about medicinal plants grown in home gardens, their purpose (for medicines, food as seasoning and decor), to identify medicinal raw materials used for medicinal purposes, their preparation methods, indications for use, doses and duration. The indications for use identified in the study were compared with European Union herbal monographs by the Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products published by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) [21]. In this way, an attempt was made to determine the extent to which the indications for use in this study matched the indications approved in the EMA studies. Figure 1: Study area. Taxonomic identification, botanical nomenclature and plant family assignment were performed based on validated databases: World Flora Online database [22] and Angiosperm Phylogeny Group IV [23]. Plant species were identified using writings on traditional Lithuanian flora [24; 25; 26]. Based on the method of comparative analysis, the data obtained during the research were compared with the unpublished work of [PERSON], dated 1948. One of the greatest Lithuanian herbalists, [PERSON] (1920-1996), accumulated the disappearing knowledge of folk medicine and conducted research on the rational use of medicinal plant resources and their raw materials. The most important criteria for choosing this primary archival source for comparative analysis was its well-described methodology, scientific structure and identified plant species. The research was prepared for the defence of a dissertation, but due to the unfavourable situation, it was neither defended nor published.