Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is a world-renowned botanic garden in Brooklyn, New York, USA. The Garden is adjacent to the historic brownstone community of Park Slope. About 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan by subway, the 52-acre garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory, which houses the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum, three climate-themed plant pavilions, an aquatic house, and an art gallery. Founded in 1910, the Garden holds over 10,000 taxa of plants and each year welcomes over 700,000 visitors from around the world.

Some of the specialty gardens and collections at BBG include:

[edit] Cherry Trees

The Garden has more than 200 cherry trees of 42 Asian species and cultivated varieties, making it one of the foremost cherry-viewing sites outside of Japan. The first cherries were planted at the garden after World War I, a gift from the Japanese government. Each spring at BBG, when the trees are in bloom, a month-long cherry blossom viewing festival called Hanami is held, culminating in a weekend celebration called Sakura Matsuri. Cherry trees are found on the Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk, in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, and in many other locations in the Garden. Depending on weather conditions, the Asian flowering cherries bloom from late March or early April to mid-May. The many different species bloom at slightly different times, and the sequence is tracked online at "Cherry Watch", on the BBG website.

[edit] The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden

BBG's Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden. It was constructed in 1914 and 1915 at a cost of $13,000, a gift of early BBG benefactor and trustee Alfred T. White, and it first opened to the public in June 1915. It is considered to be the masterpiece of its creator, Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881-1943). Shiota was born in a small Japanese village about 40 miles from Tokyo, and in his youth spent years traversing Japan on foot to explore its natural landscape. He emigrated to the United States in 1907.

The garden is a blend of the ancient hill-and-pond style and the more modern stroll-garden style, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. Its three acres contain hills, a waterfall, a pond, and an island, all artificially constructed. Carefully placed rocks also play leading roles. Among the architectural elements of the garden are wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, a torii or gateway, and a Shinto shrine. A masterful restoration of the garden in 2000 was recognized with the New York Landmark Conservancy's 2001 Preservation Award.

[edit] The Cranford Rose Garden

In 1927, Walter V. Cranford, a construction engineer whose firm built many of Brooklyn's subway tunnels, donated $15,000 to BBG for a rose garden. Excavation revealed an old cobblestone road two feet below the surface and tons of glacial rock, which had to be carted away on horse-drawn barges.

The Cranford Rose Garden opened in June 1928. It was designed by Harold Caparn, a landscape architect, and Montague Free, the Garden's horticulturist. Many of the original plants are still in the garden today. There are over 5,000 bushes of nearly 1,400 kinds of roses, including wild species, old garden roses, hybrid tea roses, grandifloras, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, climbers, ramblers, and miniature roses.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 the Palm House has catering by Charles, Sally, and Charles 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).

[edit] See also

• List of botanical gardens in the United States
• List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City

[edit] External links

• Brooklyn Botanic Garden Website
• BBG Historic Image Collection (many images are in public domain)
• Review of Brooklyn Botanic Garden
• Air visit of 'Brooklyn Botanic Garden' in Photographs
• Google map of the BBGhe:הגנים הבוטניים של ברוקלין

nl:Brooklyn Botanic Garden