Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Urban botanic garden with a historic Japanese landscape, cherry groves, and curated collections.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City follows Takeo Shiota, a self-taught Japanese landscape designer who arrived in New York in 1907 and was hired in 1914 to build a Japanese garden on land once used as a city ash dump. It traces how he shaped the hills and pond you can see, planted maples and cherries along the shore, and created the first Japanese garden inside any American public botanic garden. The guide then turns to 1938, when rising anti-Japanese hostility before the war reached the garden itself. Look for the lanterns and the lakeside shrine as you walk the pond's edge.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
New York Botanical Garden
Botanical garden preserving a fifty-acre old-growth forest and a landmark conservatory.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Vast meadow park built over former ash dumps, crowned by the world's largest freestanding globe.
Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center
Hilltop public garden with manicured grounds, wooded paths, and panoramic Hudson River views.
Little Island
Floating public park built atop 132 concrete tulip-shaped piles rising from the Hudson River.
Greenacre Park
Vest-pocket park with a dramatic twenty-five-foot cascade that drowns out Midtown traffic noise.