Rock Garden

When it opened in 1917, the Rock Garden was one of the first rock gardens in an American public garden. Nestled into the hillside along the western border of Brooklyn Botanic Garden just north of the Herb Garden, the Rock Garden features a number of alpine and montane microclimates, home to succulents, heaths, species tulips, and other plants that thrive in rocky, fast-draining soils. The microclimates were created by the careful placement of large boulders, many of them left behind by melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.

Colorful tulips and daffodils are among the first flowers to emerge here in spring, followed by sturdy azaleas and heaths, and delicate columbines, love-in-a-mist, and poppies in late spring. Catchfly and anemones bloom in summer, and in autumn, stonecrops flower among the fall foliage. Winter-blooming witch-hazels provide lovely color in the colder months, often against a backdrop of snow-covered conifers.