When landscape designer Brook Klausing, the founder of Brook Landscape, was asked to reimagine the front entrance of the Brooklyn Museum, there wasn’t much in the way of a garden to work with.
Photography by Douglas Lyle Thompson.
Polshek added the modern glass entrance and also the crescent-shaped strips of grass, which broke up the concrete, but instead of people lounging on the lawn as Polshek imagined, the space became a no man’s land.
Klausing knew just whom to call to help him design it: his longtime friend, ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin.
Speaking at the Garden Futures Summit, McMackin said, “I’m so proud of this garden because it’s a garden for the people waiting at the bus stop. This is a garden for the hotdog vendor.”
1. Design for community.
“We need more gardens outside of gates and fences,” McMackin says, who views public horticulture as an issue of social justice.
The new Brooklyn Museum plaza invites passerby to linger on wood benches that Klausing says are randomly placed in the garden with enough space for people to be scattered but not overly curated For a home gardener this...
...might mean reconsidering the solid wall of privacy screening at the street in favor of something that offers glimpses of the garden beyond or possibly extending your garden to the planting strip on the other side of the sidewalk
2. Go ahead, kill the lawn.
Step one to reinvigorating the plaza was to kill the existing lawn. If you have your own section of unused, dead-zone lawn, consider replacing it with something that will provide sustenance and habitat for butterflies, birds, and bees.
3. Soften the hardscape.
Brook Landscape built the benches from basic 8×8 pieces of lumber. Milkweeds, including butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata ‘Ice Ballet’), are planted close to each of the benches to put people and butterflies into close contact.
The new bands of permeable crushed bluestone aggregate create paths through the garden and also help reduce stormwater runoff.
Inspired by the bleacher seating architect Elizabeth Roberts designed for the sculpture garden in the back, simple wood benches bring another natural material to the concrete pavilion.
Because this garden sits in a prominent public space, McMackin and Klausing were careful to make the new garden look its best on Day One.
4. Put your best foot forward.
5. Narrow your palette.
As the only vertical element in the garden, artist Deborah Kass’s yellow OY/YO sculpture draws focus.
McMackin chose mostly yellow and white plants for the garden’s spring and summer chapters, in part inspired by Deborah Kass’s yellow OY/YO, which sits within the garden, but also because she wanted to show that yellow, an often underused garden color, can be part of a high-design landscape.
The tight palette helps the wildflowers to look even more intentional.
Come autumn the palette shifts to purple as asters come into bloom. Asters provide vital late-season food for pollinators and birds.
6. Plant an ombré.
Pollinator-friendly coreopsis carries the garden through the majority of the summer; McMackin planted three cultivars: ‘Summer Sunshine,’ ‘Moonbeam,’ and ‘Gilded Lace.’
7. Invite wildlife in.
When selecting plants Klausing and McMackin focussed on native wildflowers for bees host plants for butterflies including milkweed which they planted close to the benches in...
...the hopes that visitors could see caterpillars and chrysalises and plants that would produce seedheads for birds the hope is to leave the plants standing through winter
The meadow is not just wildflowers: McMackin and Klausing used shrubs, including three Ilex glabra (‘Compacta,’ ‘Gem Box,’ and ‘Maryland Dwarf’) and Sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia ‘Hummingbird’) to anchor the native pollinators.
8. Create structure.
Native grasses like Gunsmoke switchgrass (Panicium virgatum) and Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Prarie Blues’) add structure and year-long interest.