Our Ecological Approach
Whether we are furnishing planters in public plazas or cultivating gardens in our districts’ most beloved parks, every planted area that we steward is more than just visually appealing—it’s a thriving interrelated network of plant, insect, microbial, fungal and bird communities. Our work centers ecologically-supportive principles at every stage, from selecting native plants to seasonally-appropriate maintenance.
Gardening for ecology is just one motivation. Gardening for social and cultural benefit—for people—is just as important. Our garden designs aim for year-round beauty, which means keeping some spring bulbs and ornamental cultivars in the mix. We involve volunteers in nearly every aspect of our horticulture work, fostering both a sense of community and connection to our green spaces.
In partnership with NYC Parks, our two largest horticultural investments are at McGolrick Park in Greenpoint and Bushwick Inlet Park in Williamsburg. In McGolrick Park, which boasts North Brooklyn’s oldest tree canopy, we are building an understory of native shrubs and plants that thrive in the shade. At Bushwick Inlet Park (50 Kent Ave)—a full-sun pollinator meadow—we are tasked with eradicating invasive mugwort, providing irrigation, and maintaining garden beds where both native plants and weeds grow very fast.
This is the benefit of public-private partnership; as a hyper-local parks conservancy, we are able to augment city services with site-specific care.
Bushwick Inlet Park (50 Kent)
We’re on a multi-year mission to restore the lawns and pollinator gardens at Bushwick Inlet Park; from the spring 2024 to the end of 2026, NBK Parks will have invested more than a quarter million dollars in direct services and plants for this space. Lead by Jeff Hewitt, Manager of Horticulture and Stewardship, our team has been steadily transforming thickets of weeds into flowering beds of Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Foxglove Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), and dozens of other native species. It is truly pollinator heaven!
Bushwick Inlet Park is a favorite spot for both community and corporate volunteers, who learn about the environmental history of North Brooklyn’s waterfront and local ecology while planting, weeding, and mulching the garden beds. In addition to weekly volunteer sessions with the Brooklyn Pollinator Project, we host Garden Club once a month and seasonal field work days with The HOPE Program that have had enormous impact
Learn more about our work in Bushwick Inlet Park:
A Sea of Mugwort. What appears to be lush greenery is actually a park choked with Mugwort, an invasive species that consumed the garden beds within a year of the opening of Bushwick Inlet Park.
credit: Mark Davis
Magic Carpet. What was once a dustbowl has been restored to a lounge-worthy carpet of green grass, thanks to our BIP team’s persistent reseeding, watering, and grooming. The lawn is open once again for passive use (no pets or sports).
credit: Karrie Witkin
Nonstop Irrigation. A full-sun park requires hydration, particularly in the summer when the park is in peak bloom.
credit: Mark Davis
Brooklyn Pollinator Project. This informal group of volunteers gathers weekly to pitch in with weeding and replanting the garden beds.
credit: Karrie Witkin
Rewild North Brooklyn. Jeff Hewitt leads a cohort of The Hope Program through a tour of the native species and their role in the park’s ecosystem.
credit: Mark Davis
Creature Connections. Members of The Hope Program take a break from work to bond with a park denizen.
credit: Mark Davis
Weeding Workout. A Garden Club volunteer (NBK Parks board member Joe Riggs) makes a chop salad out of a mugwort thatch.
credit: Mark Davis
Making Our Beds. Our volunteers do some light weeding in the smaller, freshly mulched garden beds.
credit: Mark Davis
One Team, One Dream. Employees from SMBC bank get outside to focus on a different type of green
credit: Karrie WitkinMcGolrick Park
Under McGolrick Park’s majestic tree canopy, we partner with NYC Parks to steward this vibrant urban forest for generations to come. With support from the final grant awarded by the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund (GCEF), Lauren Clark—our Manager of Horticulture and Stewardship at McGolrick—is implementing a planting plan to revitalize the garden beds, improve soil health, and support biodiversity by cultivating natural forest layers beneath the soaring London Planes.
Education and community engagement are critical components of our investment in this beloved neighborhood space. In addition to hosting popular Garden Club events and naturalist-themed walking tours, we launched an Urban Forest Fellowship in summer 2025 to conduct a tree census and canopy health assessment of all the trees in McGolrick Park (more than 350 total).
The Urban Forest Fellowship dovetailed with two critical citywide initiatives: the 2025 NYC Tree Census and the announcement of the first NYC Urban Forest Plan. Beyond benefiting the park, the program provided Fellows with intensive hands-on training, networking opportunities with forestry professionals, and direct exposure to the field of arboriculture.
Towering Trees. Through the GCEF grant, NBK Parks is developing park programming with intentional focus on McGolrick Park’s most valuable asset—its tree canopy.
credit: Mark Davis
Spring Ephemerals. Adding spring color to the garden beds along McGolrick Park’s Olmsted-era promenades is an important feature of our planting plans.
credit: Karrie Witkin
Community Input. The GCEF planning process kicked off with a Townhall and a Visioning session to get feedback on community priorities for the park. We heard overwhelmingly from the community that McGolrick Park provides an essential respite, a shared backyard, and a cherished “third place.”
credit: Mark Davis
Hopping the Fences. Garden Club volunteers get access to work in areas of the park normally restricted from the public.
credit: Mark Davis
Community Planting. Volunteers get to witness first hand the products of their effort throughout the seasons as the gardens mature.
credit: Mark Davis
Special Delivery. In 2025, our team planted two new flowering trees in McGolrick Park: a Magnolia Ann and a Conus x Venus (dogwood).
credit: Mark Davis
Mulchfest Madness. We’ve partnered with NYC Parks on Mulchfest Weekend by providing equipment and staff to make McGolrick a holiday tree chipping site.
credit: Mark Davis
Tree-Cycle. Volunteers use the spruce chips from Mulchfest to mulch the street trees around McGolrick Park.
credit: Diego Martinez-Conde
Forest from the Trees. Our Urban Forest Fellows produced a detailed inventory of McGolrick’s trees, including species, estimated age, and health indicators to build on known data in NYC Parks’ existing tree maps.
credit: Mark Davis
Inner Circle. Our Urban Forest Fellowship provided fellows with a co-learning environment and mentorship from our horticulture director and forestry professionals.
credit: Mark Davis