Founded in 1910, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is located in Mount Prospect Park in central Brooklyn, New York, just near the Brooklyn Museum. It's grown over the years to become a space for education as well as entertainment. Click and drag to explore the gardens highlights.
This Italian-style formal garden features an expansive, emerald-green lawn and classically-inspired stone columns and fountain. In spring, rest and watch the cherries, crabapples, and azaleas in bloom.
The Native Flora Garden seeks to recreate the natural lands that once flourished here: small forests, meadows, bogs, and pine barrens. This area is filled with wildlife including hummingbirds and small mammals.
The Cranford Rose Garden has been one of the most popular attractions since it first opened in 1928. In June, when the roses are in full bloom, blossoms cascade down arches and climb up lattices.
The Cherry Esplanade leads from the Rose Garden towards the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. Visit at the end of April to witness the double-flowering Kanzan cherries in full blossom.
Follow the winding paths to slowly reveal the Japanese Garden, styled on ancient and modern designs. Take a seat and admire the calm pond with its draping willows and red-painted ceremonial torii.
The garden was designed by the Japanese-American landscape architect Takeo Shiota in 1914, and was the first public Japanese-inspired garden in the USA.
Laid in 1955, the Fragrance Garden was the first garden in the USA designed to accommodate people with visual impairments. Its low beds, braille labels, and enticing scents offer enjoyment to all.
Take a break in the Yellow Magnolia Cafe, found inside the Steinhardt Conservatory, a beau-arts style glasshouse. Enjoy the modern, vegetable-focused menu while looking over the Lily Pool Terrace.
The Desert Pavilion of the Steinhardt Conservatory shows just how vibrant deserts can be. Discover trees, cacti, succulents, and wildflowers from the deserts of Africa, Australia, and the Americas.
The Aquatic House displays plants from Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s large orchid collection as well as a variety of tropical aquatic plants from around the world, including these giant water lilies.
The Japanese art of Bonsai, or cultivating miniature trees, has entertained people for centuries. The C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum holds one of the largest collections of Bonsai trees outside of Japan.
Dedicated to providing a green space for city kids, the Discovery Garden lets children of all ages explore the plants and animals found in a meadows, marshes, woodlands, and vegetable gardens.
Follow the babbling Belle's Brook as it meanders through the Shelby White and Leon Levy Water Garden. Reeds. sedges, and rushes line the banks, providing a home for insects and helping to filter the water.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Find these, and more, in the beds of the BBG Herb Garden. Filled with plants that, throughout history have been used in perfumes, recipes, and medicines.
The Rock Garden, opened in 1917, provides a safe haven for a number of alpine and desert plants that prefer dry, rough soils. Succulents are found hugging the ground, while conifers tower overhead.
Step outside into more botanical gardens from around the world, like Kew Gardens in London or the gardens of São Paolo, Brazil
Born in Pennsylvania, Kieth Haring later made his name as a street artist in early 80s New York, spray-painting subway cars and street walls, synthesising cultures as broad as hip-hop, the Grateful Dead, and the Jesus Movement.
In 1982, when Haring made the leap from graffiti artist to gallery artist, he retained his visual street-lingo and began building a cast of characters and a host of symbols. Retrospect (1989) collects many of them together, including the beloved dancing dog.
Funky, fun, and just a little absurd, Haring's system of symbols conjures a sense of motion, rhythm, alternate-reality. Stick figures engage in all kinds of activity. This one's riding a dolphin.
Haring called his symbols 'icons'. They allowed him to deal with themes as light as 'dance' and as heavy as the AIDS crisis. Always dynamic, the icons often carry an implicit threat. Take this pair of scissors, for example.
The arms look like two figures clapping over their heads, joined in the middle, marrying function and celebration. But can we trust the sharp points, the act of severance, or the sense of power and propaganda that a ribbon-cutting suggests?
One of Haring's most popular motifs is the Radiant Child. Brought up in the United Church, Haring was alive to the sense of community and spirituality of the church, but, as a gay man, was also a vocal critic of intolerance and indoctrination. The innocent baby expresses this.
In this section, two figures high-five through the body of a third. It's classic Haring, cool and vibey but unsettling. Violence done to bodies was a chief concern of his as he used art to campaign against homophobia and raise awareness of AIDS, from which he sadly died in 1990.
Discover more about Haring's link to music and culture with Sound and Movement from the Nakamura Collection
Van Gogh's night sky is a field of roiling energy.
Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order.
Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress...
...a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning.
But death was not ominous for van Gogh. "Looking at the stars always makes me dream," he said, "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?"
Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."
The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night.
The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory.
Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting.