Things to do / Travel Guide
Address:1000 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, New York
Tel:
(718) 623-7200
Our Botanical Gardens Expert Says:
The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is a 52-acre living museum where the plant collections and specialty gardens are top-notch and world-class. This urban oasis features more than 10,000 different kinds of plants from around the world. These include a cherry tree esplanade, the Shakespeare Garden, an English garden a one-acre rose garden, a Japanese hill and a pond garden. There is also a fragrance garden for the blind, a water-lily pond terrace, a rock garden, and a bonsai tree collection.
Coming with the children? There are special children's gardens here where the kids can enjoy planting, tending, and harvesting, as well as craft-making, creative play, and much more. The Hill-and-Pond Garden includes a small Shinto temple, a carp-filled pond, hills, a waterfall, and an island, along with wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, and the torii or gateway. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden also has more than 200 cherry trees, of 42 species and varieties, and each spring the Garden hosts Sakura Matsuri, a weekend-long cherry festival, when the trees are in bloom.
Getting here is simple. From the Manhattan Bridge, go straight ahead on Flatbush Avenue to the arch at Grand Army Plaza. Go 2/3 around the circle to Eastern Parkway, keeping the library on your right. From there it's just 1 block and to the right onto Washington Avenue and the Brooklyn Museum on its corner.
From Brooklyn Botanic Garden - NYC, New York:
Founded in 1910, Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a tranquil, 52-acre urban oasis featuring more than 10,000 different kinds of plants from around the world. Situated in the heart of Brooklyn, the Garden hosts more than 700,000 visitors annually and inspires them to discover that plants are essential to life.
Called the "premier horticultural attraction in the region," by The New York Times, the Garden is made up of many exquisite and historic specialty gardens, including the Japanese-Hill-and-Pond-Garden, the Children's Garden, the Native Flora Garden, the Cranford Rose Garden, the Alice Recknagel Ireys Fragrance Garden, and the Steinhardt Conservatory.