Nature in Prospect Park

Listen closely and throughout Prospect Park you’ll hear the gentle hum of butterflies, bees and other pollinators loving the park’s flowers and doing the important work of enabling plant fertilization and the production of seeds. Ever wondered about these creatures and the plants they love? We talked to Prospect Park Alliance’s Horticultural and Natural Resources Crew staff to learn about four beautiful spots you won’t want to miss on your next park stroll.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy devastated the Park, damaging and destroying hundreds of trees. A particularly affected area was the secluded Vale of Cashmere, a hidden Park gem.

The Alliance received $1.2 million in funding from the National Parks Service through the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Assistance Grant Program for Historic Properties, administered by New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, to restore the Vale and Lookout Hill (another damaged area) to a healthy, native woodland habitat.

Prospect Park is home to an epic watercourse—a series of pools, streams and waterfalls that culminate in Brooklyn’s only lake. In recent months, Prospect Park Alliance has undertaken an extensive cleanup of the landscape that sculpts this waterway. Check out this stunning series of before-and-after shots that show the breadth of the work undertaken by Alliance staff and volunteers in the spring and summer of 2019 to revitalize this important natural area.  

The public helped us complete this work, cleaning up the landscape around the Lily Pond Pool at Binnen Bridge near the Boathouse. Volunteers donned waders to remove aquatic weeds, clean up the shoreline and perform other tasks to beautify the area in fall 2019.