A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a serene, three-acre sanctuary showcasing the rich natural history of the New York metropolitan area. Originally opened in 1911 as the garden's very first specialty section, it serves as a living museum of the region's indigenous ecosystems. The garden features a mature, century-old deciduous forest alongside a sun-drenched expansion that replicates local meadows, bogs, and pine barrens using plants wild-collected within a 100-mile radius of the city.
The Olmsted Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, designed the original layout of the full 52 acre botanic garden in 1910. The “Local Flora Section” was designed by the gardens’s first curator of plants, the research taxonomist Norman Taylor. It began as a two acre plot with wildflower beds arranged systematically by plant family. In 1931 it was reimagined by Henry K. Svenson as an ecological woodland community. In 2013 the Native Flora Garden Expansion, designed by the landscape architect Darrel Morrison opened. The sunny coastal meadow and pine barrens plant communities represented here, along with those of the older, forested part of the garden, represent the flora that once inhabited the New York City area.
The Native Flora Garden is full of life in all seasons. It sees some of the first signs of spring in the city when bloodroot, trillium, and other spring ephemerals emerge. In summer, colorful blooms and tall grasses flourish in the meadow, attracting native bees, wasps, monarchs and other butterflies. It’s also home to migrating and resident birds, from hummingbirds and petite warblers to great blue herons, ospreys and red-tailed hawks. Brilliant foliage and late-blooming flowers emerge in autumn, and in winter, small paw prints can be seen leading away from the bare, hollow trees, and back again.
