Interesting news from Metro by way of Curbed: the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is getting greener. They are talking about a new visitor’s center and wanting to be the model of a green institutions.

PROSPECT HEIGHTS. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was a trailblazer back
in the day. In 1914, it opened the country’s first Children’s Garden
and began the first bonsai collection in 1925. But the nearly
100-year-old institution recognizes it needs to reinvigorate its
mission and become even “greener.”

“We’re really getting our heads together on how we can be a
model of a green institution,” Scot Medbury, BBG’s president and CEO,
said yesterday at a breakfast forum. The garden wants to position
itself as “better interpreters” of what sustainability means and how
New Yorkers can incorporate it into their lives.

With New York’s population expected to grow by 1 million people
by 2030 — and half of those people expected to move to Brooklyn —
Medbury wants the garden to help “strengthen the greening of the
borough.”

To that end, BBG is planning to construct a new visitor’s
center — expected to be completed for the garden’s centennial in 2010 —
that will have a green roof that “we think will take it to the next
level,” Medbury said.

The garden is also getting more involved in working with local
gardeners on food issues — it’s hosting an event on Mar. 10 called
“Garden-wise greening: growing healthy soil, food and community.”

Patrick Cullina, vice president of horticulture and
facilities, hopes the new center will change perceptions of the
benefits of green roofs and “challenge the assumptions and change the
vocabulary of what we have on our roofs going forward.”

The center is still in preliminary designs by the New York-based firm Weiss/Manfredi.