The Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is a botanical garden located across from
Prospect Park near Grand Army Plaza
in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Founded in 1910, the 52 acre (210,000 m²) garden includes a cherry tree esplanade, a
one-acre (4,000 m²) rose garden, a Japanese hill and pond
garden, a fragrance garden for the blind, a water-lily
pond terrace, a series of conservatories, a rock garden, a native flora garden, a
bonsai tree collection, and children's gardens and discovery exhibits.
Some of the more popular gardens at the BBG include:
The Cranford Rose Garden
Cranford Rose Garden entrance
The Cranford Rose Garden was opened in June 1928. It was designed by Harold Caparn, a
landscape architect for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Montague Free, the Garden's
horticulturist. With 650 cultivars then represented, many of the original plants from 1927 are still in the garden today. There
are over 5,000 bushes of nearly 1,200 varieties of roses in the garden, including wild species, old garden roses, hybrid
tea roses, grandiflora roses, floribunda
roses, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, climbers, ramblers, and miniature roses.
Cherry Trees
The Garden has more than 200 cherry trees, of 42 species and varieties. The first cherries
were planted at the garden after World War I, and were a gift from the Japanese government. Each spring, a weekend-long cherry
festival called Sakura Matsuri is held when the trees are in bloom. Cherry trees are found on the Cherry Esplanade, the
Cherry Walk, in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, in the Osborne Garden and in many other locations in the Garden. Depending on
weather conditions, the Asian flowering cherries bloom at the Garden starting in late March or early April ending through
mid-May. Many of the different species bloom at slightly different times.
The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
Copper statue of child holding butterfly found in the Fragrance Garden.
The tea house of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in
1915
The "Yuki-yoki" of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in
1922. This device, actually a
yuki
yoke (雪避け) in Japanese, is a snow deflector for trees
The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was designed by Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota
(1881-1943). Shiota, who was born in a small Japanese village about 40 miles from Tokyo, spent his
youth wandering Japan on foot to explore its natural landscape. In 1907 he came to America and
designed this garden, which opened to the public in 1915. The Hill-and-Pond Garden includes a small
Shinto temple, a carp-filled pond, hills, a waterfall, and an
island, all of which were constructed to designer Shiota's exacting specifications. Architectural elements found in the garden
include wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, and the torii or gateway.
The Shakespeare Garden
An English cottage garden exhibits plants mentioned
in Shakespeare's plays and poems. More than eighty of the plants mentioned in
Shakespeare's writings grow there; the common or the Shakespearean names as well as the botanical name and references to relevant
quotations are found on labels near each plant too
The Fragrance Garden
Next to the Shakespeare Garden is the fragrance garden, complete with braille information
signs for visitors with sight disabilities. All are encouraged to rub the leaves of various odiferous plants between their
fingers. There are four sections in the garden each with a theme: (1) plants to touch, (2) plants with scented leaves, (3)
fragrant flowering plants, and (4) kitchen herbs. The garden is wheelchair-accessible and
all the plantings are in beds at an appropriate height for people in wheelchairs. A fountain provides a calming sound and a place
to wash one's hands after experiencing the various plants.
The Children's Garden
Although the BBG Children's Garden is not regularly open to the public, it carries special significance as the oldest
continually operating children's garden in the world within a botanic garden. The Children's Garden was opened in 1914 under the
direction of BBG educator Ellen Eddy Shaw and operates as a community garden for children, with hundreds of individual children
registering for plots each year in spring, summer, fall, and winter. The BBG Children's Garden has served as a model for other
similar gardens around the world including the family garden at the New York
Botanical Garden. Its participatory learning environment echoes other children's spaces founded in Brooklyn around the
turn of the 20th century, including the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the
Brownsville Children's Library.
Visitor and gardener information
BBG not only has a gift shop and visitor center, it provides reference information about gardening at its Gardener's
Resource Center to home gardeners and professional horticulturists. During the spring
and summer, an outdoor cafe that provides a variety of refreshments and meals. A Beaux-Arts style conservatory hall known as Palm House has catering for up to three hundred
guests. Less apparent to the casual visitor is BBG's diverse programs in scientific research, youth education, and community
environmental horticulture, all of which command a substantial share of the staff (BBG as a whole has 175 full-time staff and 100
part-time) and the annual operating budget ($16.5M).
See also
External links
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