Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Garden, Native Plant Garden, and narrated tram tour; entire Garden Passport pack-
age $13 adults, $11 seniors and students, $5 children 2-12. Apr-Oct Tues-Sun and
Mon holidays 10am-6pm; Nov-Mar Tues-Sun and Mon holidays 10am-5pm. Trans-
portation: See “Getting there,” in the paragraph above.
BROOKLYN
It's easy to link visits to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, and Prospect Park, since they're all an easy walk from
one another, just off
Grand Army Plaza.
Designed by Frederick Law
Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as a grand entrance to their Prospect Park,
it boasts a Civil War memorial arch designed by John H. Duncan
(1892-1901) and the main
Brooklyn Public Library,
an Art Deco
masterpiece completed in 1941 (the garden and museum are just on
the other side of the library, down Eastern Pkwy.). The entire area is
a half-hour subway ride from midtown Manhattan.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Just down the street from the
Brooklyn Museum of Art (see below) is the most popular botanic
garden in the city. This peaceful 52-acre sanctuary is at its most spec-
tacular in May when the thousands of deep pink blossoms of cherry
trees are abloom. Well worth seeing is the spectacular
Cranford
Rose Garden,
one of the largest and finest in the country; the
Shakespeare Garden,
an English garden featuring plants mentioned
in his writings; a
Children's Garden;
the
Osborne Garden,
a 3-acre
formal garden; the
Fragrance Garden,
designed for the blind but
appreciated by all noses; and the extraordinary
Japanese Hill-and-
Pond Garden.
The renowned
C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum
is home
to the world's oldest and largest collection of bonsai, while the
impressive $2.5-million Steinhardt Conservatory holds the garden's
extensive indoor plant collection.
900 Washington Ave. (at Eastern Pkwy.), Brooklyn.
&
718/623-7200.
www.bbg.
org. Admission $8 adults, $4 seniors and students, free for children under 16, free to
all Tues and Sat 10am-noon year-round, plus Wed-Fri from mid-Nov through Feb.
Apr-Sept Tues-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-6pm; Oct-Mar Tues-Fri 8am-4:30pm,
Sat-Sun 10am-4:30pm. Subway: Q to Prospect Park; 2, 3 to Eastern Pkwy./Brooklyn
Museum.
Brooklyn Museum of Art
One of the nation's premier art
institutions, the Brooklyn Museum of Art rocketed back into public
consciousness in 1999 with the hugely controversial “Sensation:
Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection,” which drew
international media attention and record crowds who came to see
just what an artist—and a few conservative politicians—could make
out of a little elephant dung.
