Healing Plants Around the World

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Discover how cultures around the world rely on plants for everything from medicine to cosmetics. Embark on a journey of the senses through a stunning re-creation of an Italian Renaissance garden and interactive stations highlighting the rejuvenating and healing powers of tea, cacao, and tropical juices. Explore a fascinating presentation of rare books and manuscripts known as herbals and enjoy a poetry walk, weekend Renaissance music & dance performances, hands-on science adventures for kids, and more. May 18 - September 8, 2013

Healing Plants Around the World features the research of some of the Garden's leading experts in science, medicine, and ethnobotany. Explore plants such as the cinchona tree, the source of quinine, which treats malaria, and white willow, whose bark leads to the production of aspirin. More than 500 species or cultivars of medicinal plants are showcased, most of them grown in the Garden's glasshouses, making this one of the largest exhibitions of medicinal plants ever mounted. See the full list.

The Italian Renaissance Garden is inspired by Europe's first botanical garden, created in 1545 at the University of Padua, in the Venetian Republic. A lush landscape of Mediterranean flowers, including exotic varieties, endangered species, and medicinal plants, are classically composed to evoke the original design that remains at Padua to this day.

This project is supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities