Satisfy an Urge for Spring With Some Photo Inspiration for Your Own Brooklyn Garden

The sight of snowdrops pushing up through the soil means spring isn’t far away, and while it might be a bit early to start potting up annuals for your Brooklyn stoop, it isn’t too soon to do some prep work and make your dream plant list.

To help you along with your garden goals, we’ve rounded up some photos of Brooklyn green spaces, from small containers to full yards.

Taking advantage of the existing arched openings in this Prospect Heights Historic District stoop, a gardener placed planters with sweet potato vine in one half and marigolds on the other on each step. Containers filled with other annuals bring the color down to the paved front yard.

Petunias cover the top of a garbage bin in Brooklyn Heights.

A shoe is reused as a planter for coleus on a Lefferts Avenue stoop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The block won the Greenest Block in Brooklyn award in 2018.

Planters follow the “thriller, filler, spiller” concept for container gardening on Stuyvesant Avenue in Bed Stuy. The block between Bainbridge and Chauncey streets was awarded Greenest Block in 2017.

We spotted this raised planter affixed to a Brooklyn Heights sidewalk.

DIY planters created by recycling available materials brighten the fence around a Flatbush apartment building.

A canna reaches for the sky in a bright yellow planter, and a wood fence provides some protection to a tree pit on Lincoln Place in Crown Heights. In 2019, the block between Nostrand and New York avenues was named the Greenest Block.

A Bed Stuy front garden layers ferns, hostas, hydrangea, boxwood and other shade-tolerant plants.

Lush planters fill a stoop in the East 25th Street Historic District.

Topiaries add some height to a Greenpoint stoop.

Tulips and daffodils bloom amidst ferns in a Brooklyn Heights rear garden.

Readers in East New York responded to a 2020 call for green pandemic respites with images of their transformed East New York rear garden.

Shrubs, including multiple hydrangeas, provide the foundation plantings for this Bed Stuy garden while a trellis attached to the fence supports a rose.

Although they are a bit larger than many Brooklyn rear yards, Brooklyn’s community gardens are filled with design inspiration. Beds at the Highland Park Community Garden in Cypress Hills were filled with hostas, irises, heuchera, roses and herbs during a spring 2021 visit.

The Brownstone Boys did a DIY garden makeover with planting beds filled with bugloss, hardy geranium, ghost ferns, ostrich ferns, echinacea and butterfly bushes. You can read more about their budget and planning process here and see the full reveal here.

[Photos by Susan De Vries unless noted otherwise]

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