The Italian Renaissance Garden in New York's botanical gardens is inspired by the garden in Padua, Italy, created in 1545.

The Italian Renaissance Garden in New York's botanical gardens is inspired by the garden in Padua, Italy, created in 1545.

The Renaissance Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, a re-creation of a 16th-century medicinal garden, is so lush and colorful, it takes only a stroll through to absorb its good medicine.

The garden, part of a summer exhibit called Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World, is a small-scale model of the Italian Renaissance Garden in Padua, Italy, Europe's first botanical garden.

The landscape includes Mediterranean flowers in multiple colors, fountains and odd plants that many people have never seen, like the opium poppy, with its unusual seed pods. The garden in Padua was created in 1545 as part of the University of Padua medical school, one of the earliest and most important medical schools in Europe.

The opium poppy is the most common source of opium and morphine.

The opium poppy is the most common source of opium and morphine.

"The medical school in Padua started in 1222," Gregory Long, president and CEO of the New York Botanical Garden, explains as he guides visitors through the garden. "The medical school, by the middle of the 16th century, had developed to the point where they had collected plants. Plants were coming into Venice from all over the world, and they were interested in studying their medical uses."

Medicinal plants are used by every culture around the world. Long says 25 percent of modern medicines are based on compounds that were originally derived from plants. Only about 1 percent of plants have actually been tested for medicinal properties they may contain.

Long says the garden at Padua was really a laboratory "to see what would be effective and what would not," he says. "And of course, sometimes plants are poisonous, so you have to be very careful. And sometimes a very good plant that's very helpful to you is poisonous if you take too much."

Excerpt from:

Growing The Latest In 16th-Century Medicine