Brooklyn Botanic Garden

1910 - present

Home to over 14,000 varieties of plants, Brooklyn Botanic Garden was originally conceived in 1910 as the newly consolidated city looked to reallocate land north and east of Prospect Park that was unused. Calvert Vaux had expressed displeasure with land east of Flatbush Avenue being incorporated into the park and excluded it from the final park plan in 1865 -- as New York moved toward consolidation, a plan was drawn to create a botanic garden near the bustling park. Originally operated under the jurisdiction of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences -- now The Brooklyn Museum -- the Garden immediately found itself a vital community institution as World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic led to significant food supply disruption and insecurity for many New Yorkers. During these early years, BBG concentrated its efforts on instructing community members in horticultural practice and creating their own war gardens, distributing well over 300,000 packets of seeds to nearby residents. Over its history, Brooklyn Botanic Garden has often acted as an experimental site for curated garden collections that were some of the first of their kind in the United States, including the Japanese Hill-and-Pond and Bonsai gardens. After decades of being freely open to the public, funding cuts prompted BBG to shift over to a paid admission model in 1996 to better-support grounds maintenance and community programming. This admission shift became a large source of friction with the surrounding community, much of which was working class. The Garden continues to pioneer experimental horticultural practices in the 21st century and has begun examining how to reestablish itself as a community institution for residents of all backgrounds.