Find Outdoor Living Inspiration in These Eight Brooklyn Gardens

As the weather warms up and Brooklynites look to take advantage of outdoor space, there are plenty of examples of inspired outdoor living across the borough. Here are eight gardens that weave together plantings, hardscaping, and furniture to extend the living space of their homes.

All of the gardens were featured in Cara Greenberg’s The Outsider column. Including an English-style rear yard and a rooftop lounge, each design reflects the homeowner’s needs and makes the most of the outdoor space.

The Outsider: Suite of Landscaped Outdoor Spaces Extends Cobble Hill Townhouse

“Gardens in the city are very much an extension of how people want to live. Some people lean into romantic notions, others focus on functionality,” said landscape architect Brook Klausing, who designed a coordinated suite of outdoor spaces — a front yard, backyard and two terraces — to enhance a newly renovated landmarked brownstone. This explains how the backyard came to be almost wholly paved with bluestone: the homeowner wanted his two kids to have a place to pass and dribble, if not actually shoot hoops.

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The Outsider: Hardscaping Anchors Fort Greene Garden With Seasonal Variety

Starting with nothing but an old brick wall, landscape designer Paul Harness created a row-house backyard with formal structure but a lot of flexibility.

“It was really a blank slate,” said Harness, a 20-year employee of Plant Specialists, a Long Island City-based company offering design, installation, and maintenance for everything from window boxes to rooftops. “Everything is 100 percent new.”

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The Outsider: Landscaping Extends Outdoor Season for Fort Greene Family

When the days grow shorter and evenings chillier, one lucky local family can stretch the outdoor living season and enjoy fall color from four newly landscaped outdoor spaces attached to their vintage townhouse.

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The Outsider: Structure, Perennials Enhance Romantic But Overgrown Brooklyn Heights Garden

This romantic walled garden has evolved over the years, for reasons both intentional and unintentional. Landscape architect Kim Hoyt originally came in to radically reshape and rethink an overgrown urban jungle for previous owners. Though the space was long neglected, Hoyt knew there were pluses she’d be able to work with. “There was a beautiful old brick wall on one side, and it was deeply wooded, with a lot of evergreen coverage, on the other,” she said.

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The Outsider: English-Style Garden in Cobble Hill Dazzles With Spring Flower Display

There’s no such thing as an instant garden, and indeed this rectangular Eden behind a mid-19th century townhouse was two decades in the making. It’s the work of Flo’s Gardens, a long-established partnership between Florence Sheers and Cecilia Kuhn, whose full-service practice includes garden design and maintenance, hardscaping, planters, and rooftops.

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The Outsider: Gravel Expanse, Wattle Fencing Give Bed Stuy Garden a European Courtyard Feel

Brook Klausing’s clients recently purchased the two lower floors of a brownstone, with impressive, large-paned windows on the back wall that Klausing likened to “viewing boxes.” But there wasn’t much to view. “The backyard was a blank slate,” he recalled.

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The Outsider: Two Walled Gardens in Brooklyn Heights Are Low-Maintenance Oases of Serenity

Landscape architect Kim Hoyt of Kim Hoyt Architecture/Landscape modestly calls her design of two separate outdoor spaces behind this 19th century row house — a bi-level backyard garden and a walled terrace off the master bedroom — “simple and minimal, with just a few moves and plantings.”

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The Outsider: Midwood Garden Charms With Subtle Plantings and Plenty of Open Space

Low maintenance and user friendly, this 20-foot-wide backyard garden, built and planted by Crown Heights-based Brook Landscape, proves that garden design needn’t be complex to be successful. “You don’t need a ton of ingredients to make a good meal,” points out Brook Klausing, who founded the design/build company in 2007 with Brian Green, an architect and fellow Kentuckian.

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