FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 22, 2015 Contact: [email protected] | 718-623-7241 HI-RES IMAGES AVAILABLE

New Discovery Garden for Children to Open at Botanic Garden in June 2015 Designed by Associates Space for Kids to Explore Native Plant and Wildlife Habitats in the Cornerstone of BBG’s South Garden Revitalization Opening Celebration June 6, 2015

BBG’s new Discovery Garden opens in June 2015. Image courtesy of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

Brooklyn, NY—In June 2015, Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) will unveil its new Discovery Garden, a one-acre space for children to explore plants and ecosystems through hands-on play and scientific investigations. The naturalistic, immersive design by award-winning landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) models habitats found in the greater area—woodland, meadow, and marsh— interlaced with meandering paths and boardwalks that allow visitors to slow down and observe nature; horticultural plantings in the Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard; and a colorful four-season entrance garden. The Discovery Garden is part of BBG’s continuing Campaign for the Next Century, the most significant garden renewal effort since the Garden’s founding over 100 years ago.

At four times the size of its former site, the new Discovery Garden can accommodate the growing number of children who visit BBG each year, with expanded programing targeting children ages 1 to 12. Accessible throughout the year, the new Discovery Garden is designed for all children, families, and school groups. Drop-in education programs, portable field guides, interactive science activity stations, and other dynamic tools encourage children to make their own discoveries in the space. Interpretive materials introduce easy techniques for children—and their caregivers and teachers—to continue to engage with plants in parks, urban streets, backyards, and beyond.

“The new Discovery Garden is a place for city kids and all visitors to experience the wonder of nature,” says Scot Medbury, president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “Working with the incredible team at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, BBG sought to create a space that sparks the imagination and channels kids’ innate curiosity into science and nature learning.” Page 1 of 3

For more than 100 years, youth education programs at BBG have inspired kids to learn about plants and become lifelong advocates for the environment. Today, the Garden serves more than 150,000 children every year through classes, drop-in activities, interpretive displays and guides, and a range of formal education programs that complement STEM curriculum standards in schools.

Design Features Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), the new Discovery Garden features a network of trails that connect microcosms of natural plant communities.

“One of the many joys of working at BBG is the opportunity to design for the uniquely diverse range of visitors from all over ,” says Michael Van Valkenburgh, president and CEO of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. “The new Discovery Garden will offer children and families a rich and engaging outdoor learning experience—one that complements the Garden’s position as one of the city’s preeminent cultural institutions.”

In the Meadow, winding, intimate paths through tall meadow grasses and flowers create the impression of immersion in a wild habitat. Native plantings in this section, including little bluestem, side oats grama, butterfly milkweed, and rattlesnake master, attract butterflies, bees, moths, and hummingbirds and allow children to learn about plant-pollinator relationships. In the Marsh, young naturalists follow a circuit of split logs and boulders as they explore the flora and fauna of this rich environment populated with species that have adapted to living in or near water such as sweet bay, summersweet, sedges, ferns, and rose mallow. The Woodland, the largest area in the new Discovery Garden, includes both deciduous and evergreen forest communities, including beech, oak, and maple trees, lady’s slipper orchid, ferns, dogtooth violet, and trillium. Raised boardwalks and platforms allow children to explore the forest habitat from a variety of vantage points.

These trails segue into horticultural plantings in the Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard and a four-season garden. The Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard, with a pavilion designed by MVVA in collaboration with Architecture Research Office (ARO), is an area where children can enjoy hands-on gardening experiences with soil, , and food plants. The four-season garden allows children to explore a sophisticated display of beautiful plants—such as artichoke thistle, pigsqueak, blue star, bear’s breeches, and bulbs—with their senses.

Opening Programming A public festival celebrating the opening of the Discovery Garden will take place on Saturday, June 6, 2015. BBG will also celebrate the opening with its spring gala and special summer 2015 programming including special programming for school groups, plant mystery tours of the new garden for kids, and nature play meet-ups for community partners. Programming for adults will include sensory plant walks, “plant nerd” tours, and botany lectures for adult audiences.

Companion Book The Kid’s Guide to Exploring Nature—published in 2014 and part of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Guides for a Greener Planet series—serves as a companion to the Discovery Garden’s programming. Created by BBG’s expert education staff, the book explores ecological concepts with lush, scientifically accurate illustrations, thought- provoking, fun activities for every season, and fascinating facts that will inspire young readers to look closely at the world around them.

About MVVA Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates is a landscape architecture firm that creates environmentally sustainable and experientially rich places across a wide range of landscape scales, from city to campus to garden. Founded in 1982, MVVA maintains offices in Brooklyn and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its earliest works, primarily gardens, plazas, and other smaller institutional projects, were critically celebrated for their groundbreaking achievements. In the next decade, MVVA’s commissions expanded to a scale in which it was possible for landscape to drive urban form, with projects such as the master plans for Waller Creek and Princeton University and built work like Brooklyn and the Alumnae Valley Landscape Restoration. MVVA continues to design small-scale landscapes such as the recently completed Monk’s Garden at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner . Page 2 of 3

Working closely with urban planners, architects, engineers, and ecologists, MVVA has emerged as an innovative leader of multidisciplinary urban design teams. The firm’s collaborative approach ensures that the experience of MVVA’s built landscapes grows from, and is supported by, outstanding environmental performance, financial resourcefulness, technical innovation, and material expression.

About the Campaign for the Next Century BBG’s Campaign for the Next Century supports a suite of new and enhanced gardens, facilities, and programs created in response to increased attendance at the Garden, ongoing revitalization in Brooklyn, and growing interest in urban horticulture and sustainability. Other notable projects include the extension of the Native Flora Garden (2013); the new Visitor Center (2012); and the new Herb Garden (2010). The new Discovery Garden is part of the South Garden Project, an ambitious series of renovations at the southern end of BBG that will improve the visitor experience and enable the institution to operate in a more environmentally sustainable fashion. They include the relocated and expanded Discovery Garden; an expanded and redesigned public entrance at by Architecture Research Office; a new Early Spring Garden; renewal of the historic McKim, Mead & White brick archway; a relocated and expanded indoor café and outdoor food kiosk; a new Water Garden; and completion of a larger water conservation project.

Further information about the opening of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s new Discovery Garden will be announced in early 2015.

Note to Press: High-resolution images are available at bbg.org/press. To arrange an interview or for further information, please contact [email protected] or 718-623-7241.

General Information

Founded in 1910, Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is an urban botanic garden that connects people to the world of plants, fostering delight and curiosity while inspiring an appreciation and sense of stewardship of the environment. Situated on 52 acres in the heart of Brooklyn, the Garden is home to over 14,000 kinds of plants and hosts more than 800,000 visitors annually.

Learn what’s happening at Brooklyn Botanic Garden at bbg.org/visit/calendar, read the Garden’s blog at bbg.org/news, and find out what’s in bloom at bbg.org/bloom. Visitor entrances are at 990 Washington Avenue, 150 , and at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Empire Boulevard (opening Spring 2015). For hours, directions, and admission information, please visit bbg.org/visit.

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About the New Discovery Garden

Project Summary Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s new Discovery Garden for children and families inspires wonder and curiosity about plants and the environment. It encourages investigation through open- ended play, hands-on experiences, and scientific inquiry. Visitors can explore a series of naturalistic settings based on native ecosystems and have access to plant collections and interpretive displays that invite sensory investigation.

Accessible throughout the year, the new Discovery Garden is designed for families, school groups, and general BBG visitors. Drop-in education programs, portable field guides, interactive science activity stations, and other tools encourage children to make their own discoveries in the garden. Interpretive materials introduce easy techniques for children— and their caregivers and teachers—to extend their engagement with plants in parks, urban streets, backyards, and beyond. The Discovery Garden is part of BBG’s continuing Campaign for the Next Century, the most significant garden renewal effort since the Garden’s founding over 100 years ago.

What Makes the Situated in the densely populated heart of the borough, Brooklyn Botanic Garden New Garden Special? provides essential outdoor learning opportunities for city-dwelling youth. BBG serves more than 150,000 children every year through classes, drop-in activities, interpretive displays and guides, and a range of formal education programs that complement STEM curriculum standards in schools.

At four times the size of the former garden, the new Discovery Garden can accommodate the growing number of children who visit BBG each year. While the original Discovery Garden focused on very young children (ages 3 to 6), the new garden has been designed to engage young people up to 12 years old.

The expansion of the Discovery Garden both in size and programmatic scope embodies BBG’s commitment to providing hands-on learning experiences with plants in both formal and informal education settings. And by allowing kids to experience the joy of hands-on play in an immersive natural setting, it aims to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards.

Companion Book The Kid’s Guide to Exploring Nature—published in 2014 and part of BBG’s Guides for a Greener Planet series—serves as a companion to the Discovery Garden’s programming. Created by BBG’s expert education staff, the book explores ecological concepts with lush, scientifically accurate illustrations, thought-provoking, fun activities for every season, and fascinating facts that will inspire young readers to look closely at the world around them.

Opening Programs A public festival celebrating the opening of the Discovery Garden will take place on June 6, 2015. BBG will also celebrate the opening with its spring gala and special summer 2015 programming, including special programming for school groups, plant mystery tours of the new garden for kids, and nature play meet-ups for community partners. Programming for adults will include sensory plant walks, “plant nerd” tours, and botany lectures.

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MAJOR FEATURES

Design Designed by the award-winning landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), the new Discovery Garden features a network of trails that connect microcosms of natural plant communities, including marsh, meadow, and woodland ecosystems. These trails segue into horticultural plantings in the Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard and a four-season garden. The Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard, with a pavilion designed by MVVA in collaboration with Architecture Research Office (ARO), is an area where children can enjoy hands-on gardening experiences with soil, compost, and food plants. The four-season garden allows children to explore a sophisticated display of beautiful plants with their senses.

Meadow: Winding, intimate paths through tall meadow grasses and flowers create the impression of immersion in a wild habitat. Native plantings that attract butterflies, bees, moths, and hummingbirds help demonstrate plant-pollinator relationships. Notable plants: little bluestem, side oats grama, butterfly milkweed, rattlesnake master

Woodland: The largest area in the new Discovery Garden, the Woodland Garden includes both deciduous and evergreen forest communities. Raised boardwalks and platforms allow children to explore the forest habitat from a variety of vantage points. Notable plants: beech, oak, and maple trees, lady’s slipper orchid, ferns, dogtooth violet, trillium

Marsh: Young naturalists follow a circuit of split logs and boulders as they explore the flora and fauna of this rich environment populated with species that have adapted to living in or near water. Notable plants: sweet bay, summersweet, sedges, ferns, rose mallow

Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard: Dedicated to the cultivation of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, this gardening area offers visitors hands-on scientific encounters with the natural world as they discover edible plants that relate to their own lives. It also offers accessible, ongoing opportunities to plant and tend crops, as well as drop-in nature programming as a complement to BBG’s registered classes in the historic Children’s Garden. Adjacent to the courtyard is an orchard and lawn space of over 2,000 square feet. Notable plants: annual vegetables, fruits, and flowers, currants, trumpet vine

Four-Season Garden: Within this area, children will gain confidence in using their senses as they compare plants that have been selected for their sensory qualities, including fragrance, color, texture, and contrasting forms. Notable plants: artichoke thistle, pigsqueak, blue star, bear’s breeches, bulb plants

Location Southwest corner of Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Opening June 2015

Dimensions Brooklyn Botanic Garden: 52 acres Original Discovery Garden: ¼ acre (10,500 square feet) New Discovery Garden: 1 acre (48,887 square feet)

New Plantings More than 16,000 new plantings, including over 250 deciduous and evergreen trees, 9,500 perennials, 2,500 ferns, 865 bulbs, and 2,600 grasses

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SOUTH GARDEN PROJECT DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION TEAM

Lead Designer and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. Landscape Architect

Architect Architecture Research Office

Project Team Civil and Structural Engineer: Weidlinger Associates Civil Engineer: Geosyntec Consultants Ecologist: eDesign Dynamics Soil Scientist: Craul Land Scientists, Inc. MEP Engineer: Altieri Sebor Wieber LLC Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates Code Consultant: Design 2147 Limited Restoration Architect: Building Conservation Associates Restoration Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates Exhibit Design Team: Metcalf Architecture and Design Exhibit Fabricators: Art Guild, Inc. President, Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Scot Medbury Vice President, Planning, Design, and Construction: Tracey Faireland Vice President, Horticulture: Melanie Sifton Vice President, Education and Interpretation: Sonal Bhatt Director of Conservatories and Horticulture: Mark Fisher Director of Gardens and Grounds: Ronnit Bendavid-Val Director, Interpretation and Exhibitions: Jessica Bicknell Manager, Discovery Garden and Family Programs: Ashley Gamell

Construction Team Owner’s Representative: Gardiner & Theobald General Contractor, Site and Landscape: Kelco Landscaping and Construction General Contractor, Architecture: EW Howell Co., LLC

About MVVA Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) is a landscape architecture firm that creates environmentally sustainable and experientially rich places across a wide range of landscape scales, from city to campus to garden. Founded in 1982, MVVA maintains offices in Brooklyn and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its earliest works—primarily gardens, plazas, and other smaller institutional projects—were critically celebrated for their groundbreaking achievements. In the next decade, MVVA’s commissions expanded to a scale in which it was possible for landscape to drive urban form, with projects such as the master plans for Waller Creek and Princeton University and built work like and the Alumnae Valley Landscape Restoration. MVVA continues to design small-scale landscapes such as the recently completed Monk’s Garden at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Working closely with urban planners, architects, engineers, and ecologists, MVVA has emerged as an innovative leader of multidisciplinary urban design teams. The firm’s collaborative approach ensures that the experience of MVVA’s built landscapes grows from, and is supported by, outstanding environmental performance, financial resourcefulness, technical innovation, and material expression.

About the Campaign BBG’s Campaign for the Next Century supports a suite of new and enhanced gardens, For the Next Century facilities, and programs created in response to increased attendance at the Garden, ongoing revitalization in Brooklyn, and growing interest in urban horticulture and sustainability. Other notable projects include the extension of the Native Flora Garden (2013); the new Visitor Center (2012); and the new Herb Garden (2010). The new

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Discovery Garden is part of the South Garden Project, an ambitious series of renovations at the southern end of BBG that will improve the visitor experience and enable the institution to operate in a more environmentally sustainable fashion. They include the relocated and expanded Discovery Garden; an expanded and redesigned public entrance at Flatbush Avenue by Architecture Research Office; a new Early Spring Garden; renewal of the historic McKim, Mead & White brick archway; a relocated and expanded indoor café and outdoor food kiosk; a new Water Garden; and completion of a larger water conservation project.

Funding The Discovery Garden is a major project of BBG’s Campaign for the Next Century, an ambitious undertaking that will complete the Garden’s most significant renewal since its founding more than 100 years ago. BBG has received generous support from public and private funders for the Campaign, which is ongoing.

About BBG Founded in 1910, Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is an urban botanic garden that connects people to the world of plants, fostering delight and curiosity while inspiring an appreciation and sense of stewardship of the environment. Situated on 52 acres in the heart of Brooklyn, the Garden is home to over 14,000 kinds of plants and hosts more than 800,000 visitors annually.

Learn what’s happening at Brooklyn Botanic Garden at bbg.org/visit/calendar, read the Garden’s blog at bbg.org/news, and find out what’s in bloom at bbg.org/bloom. Visitor entrances are at 990 Washington Avenue, 150 Eastern Parkway, and at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Empire Boulevard (opening Spring 2015). For hours, directions, and admission information, please visit bbg.org/visit.

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Image Sheet

Image 1: Image 2: Rendering of Hamm Children’s Learning Courtyard in Aerial map of BBG’s new Discovery Garden. BBG’s new Discovery Garden. Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Image 3: Image 4: Winter Discovery workshop at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Children explore nature at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo: Joseph O. Holmes Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson Image Sheet

Image 5: Image 6: Children explore nature at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A young visitor and instructor discover insects at Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson

Image 7: Image 8: Junior Botanists at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Children explore nature at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson