Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City. It was founded in 1910 and is located in Mount Prospect Park in central Brooklyn, adjacent to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum. The 52-acre garden holds over 14,000 taxa of plants and has nearly a million visitors each year. It includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden", plant collections, the Steinhardt Conservatory that houses the C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum, three climate-themed plant pavilions, a white cast-iron-and-glass aquatic plant house, and an art gallery.

The impetus to build Prospect Park stemmed from an April 18, 1859, act of the New York State Legislature that empowered a twelve-member commission to recommend sites for parks in the City of Brooklyn. In February 1860, a group of fifteen commissioners submitted suggestions for park locations in Brooklyn, including a 320-acre plot centered on present-day Mount Prospect Park and bounded by Warren Street to the north; Vanderbilt, Ninth, and Tenth Avenues to the west; Third and Ninth Streets to the south; and Washington Avenue to the east. Egbert Viele began drawing plans for the park, which was to straddle Flatbush Avenue and include Prospect Hill and the land now occupied by the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Museum. The onset of the Civil War stopped further activity. Early in 1865, Calvert Vaux was hired to review Viele's plans. Vaux took issue with Flatbush Avenue's division of the park. Vaux's February 1865 proposal excluded parcels of land east of Flatbush Avenue, including Prospect Hill, that were already purchased. The northeast portion served as an ash dump.

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