New Visitor Center Coming to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is currently working on a renovation of the Visitor Center as part of hundred-year-old garden renewal project.

The new center, which measures 20,000 square feet, is shaped as a curved glass building partially embedded in the hillside at the northeast corner of the garden. A leaf-shaped “living roof”, measuring 10,000 square feet, will feature more than 40,000 plats and will hopefully earn LEED Gold status with its geoexchange system aimed at heating and cooling the indoor space, as well as rain gardens that gather and filter storm-water.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden president Scot Medbury explained: “The Visitor Center will help transform the face of the Garden to our neighbors, visitors and passersby- not only beautifying the street, but bringing the spirit of the Garden to the streetscapes beyond. This extraordinary structure is not only a building, but is every bit a landscape as well, and we’re very excited to invite our fellow Brooklynites to explore how a building can serve as a garden, and how plants can be beautifully integrated into an urban environment.”

The new Visitor Center is set to open in May, with other new additions being added to the Garden as well, including a Herb Garden, a Woodland Garden and Native Flora Garden. New Water Gardens, Children’s Discovery Gardens and others are also under way.