The Four and a Half Acres Most People Drive Past
There is a stretch of Shore Road between Bay Ridge Avenue and 72nd Street where the park on your right stops being a lawn and starts being something else. The grass gives way to planted beds. A gravel path peels off toward a pond. A hand-painted sign, not a city one, tells you what is growing. Most people never turn in. They are driving to the Belt Parkway or walking the promenade below, and the garden sits above them doing its work in private.
That is Narrows Botanical Gardens, and it is one of the more unlikely things in Bay Ridge. It covers roughly four and a half acres inside Shore Road Park, it is free, and it exists because a group of neighbors started digging in 1995 and never stopped. There is no paid grounds crew. There is no admission booth. It is one of the largest and longest-running all-volunteer gardening efforts in New York City, and it is ten minutes from our counter at 10 Bay Ridge Ave.
What Is Actually In There
The thing to understand before you go is that this is not one garden. It is a series of small ones, laid out as rooms rather than as a single open space, which is why a four-acre site takes a surprisingly long time to walk.
The Lily Pond
The pond is the center of gravity and the reason most first-time visitors stay longer than they planned. Water lilies come in around May and hold through the summer. There are turtles, which will be sunning on a rock or will not, depending on the hour and the temperature. If you have brought a child, this is where the visit actually happens, and nothing else in the garden competes with it.
The Zen Garden and the Native Plant Garden
The Zen garden is the quietest corner of the property and the one that reads best in winter, when there are no leaves to hide the structure. The native plant garden is the opposite kind of pleasure: it looks loose and almost unkempt in high summer because that is what a planting of local species actually looks like when it is doing its job. Both are small. Both are worth the two minutes.
The Butterfly Garden, the Roses, the Hydrangeas
Late summer belongs to the butterfly garden, which is planted to attract exactly what the name says and succeeds often enough to be worth standing still for. The roses and hydrangeas peak earlier, in June, and are the part of the garden most likely to make a visitor say out loud that they did not know this was here.
When to Go
Early morning is the right answer most of the year. The light is better for photographs, the paths are empty, and the garden is quiet in a way it is not by noon. We open at 6 AM Monday through Friday and 7 AM on weekends specifically because the neighborhood moves early, and a coffee at 7:15 followed by a garden at 7:30 is one of the better hours available in Bay Ridge. Our early morning coffee guide covers the rest of that routine.
Season matters more here than at a park. June gives you roses and the first lilies. August gives you butterflies and a pond at full volume. October, right now, gives you fall color with the Narrows behind it and the Verrazzano on the horizon, which is the combination that makes this garden specifically a Bay Ridge garden and not a generic green space. Our fall drinks guide is the companion to that walk.
Because the gardens are volunteer-run, hours, guided tours and event listings change with the season and with who is available. The gardens publish their own current information, and it is worth a look before you make a trip specifically for a tour rather than a wander.
How to Find It From the Waterfront
Coming from the water, the gardens sit above the promenade, so you are walking up rather than along. From our door at 10 Bay Ridge Ave you head toward Shore Road and turn south, and you are at the northern edge of the plantings within a few minutes on foot. There is no grand gate to look for. The entrances are gaps in the park edge, marked by the volunteers' own signage.
If you are driving, the honest advice is the same as it is for the whole waterfront: Shore Road parking is possible and side-street parking is more likely, and the walk from wherever you land is short. We wrote the whole thing up in the parking and transit guide. If you are coming the long way along the water, the Shore Road promenade walk passes directly below the garden, and Owl's Head Park is at the other end of the same stretch, which makes a loop of the two entirely reasonable in a morning.
Practical Notes
Bring water, or buy it, because there is nothing to buy inside the garden. Bring a bag for your own trash. The paths are mostly gravel and packed earth, which means they are fine in sneakers and less fine in anything with a thin heel. Donation boxes and the volunteers' plant sales are the actual funding mechanism for the place, so if you liked it, that is where to put the ten dollars. And if you are bringing a dog, read the posted signs at the entrance you use, because rules inside planted areas are not the same as the rules on the park paths around them. Our dog-friendly guide covers the cafe side of that question.
Why This Garden Is on Our Wall
We are not a neutral party here. Brooklyn street artist Gouch has original work showing at Pier 69 Market, and every dollar from the sale of those pieces goes to Narrows Botanical Gardens. The full story is worth reading, but the short version is that a volunteer garden a few minutes from our door does something for this neighborhood that no business can do, and the arrangement is as simple as it sounds: buy the art, support the garden.
Coffee Before, Food After
A garden walk is a thirty-to-ninety-minute activity, which puts it squarely in the window a cafe is built for. Before: a La Colombe drip or a cortado, or one of the Rishi teas if you are not drinking coffee. After: that is where the rest of the menu comes in, whether it is an avocado toast and a bacon, egg and cheese at the early end of the day or something from the lunch side later. Takeout cups travel fine on a walk, and if you are organizing a group visit, catering handles the quantity. For the broader version of this itinerary, see things to do near the Bay Ridge waterfront.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220, open Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 9 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 9 PM. The phone is (718) 777-6969, and pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce. We are a waterfront cafe a few minutes from Owl's Head Park, the Shore Road promenade and the NYC Ferry landing, serving La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. Directions, a map and current hours are on the visit page, and anything else is on the FAQ or a phone call away.
