Narrows Botanical Gardens

The Narrows Botanical Gardens fill a strip of city parkland on Shore Road between Bay Ridge Avenue and 72nd Street, inside Shore Road Park. In 1995 neighbors began clearing the neglected land of garbage and weeds; local nurseries donated plants, the Fire Department lent hoses to water them, and in 1997 NYC Parks gave the gardens their name. Volunteers still run them, and they are free to visit.

Inside are a native plant garden with a stream and ponds where turtles and frogs live, rose gardens, a Japanese Zen rock garden, a lily pond and a butterfly garden planted with milkweed for migrating monarchs. The Narrows that give the gardens their name, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge over them, are in view. The map above marks the corner of Shore Road and MacKay Place, by the koi pond, where the troop has met for its service days.

The Troop in the Gardens

From the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2022 the gardens were one of the troop's regular places to serve.

• October 2020. A weekend of work in the gardens.
• January and February 2021. Matthew's Eagle Scout project: birdhouses built with the troop's help and put up in the gardens to bring native birds back.
• April 2021. On the troop's semi-virtual camping day, the morning went to service and native plants in the gardens, with sandwiches there for lunch.
• July and August 2021. Saturday service mornings.

• October and November 2021. Clyde's Eagle Scout project: a book drive, then a lending library installed in the gardens, with nearly the whole garden raked the same day. The library was still standing in January 2023, marked as a Troop 23 Eagle Scout project.
• April 2022. A service morning open to Scouts and their families, starting at the koi pond.

Matthew and Clyde both became Eagle Scouts in 2021. Their projects and the troop's other work in the city parks along the shore are on the NYC Parks in Bay Ridge page. The gardens welcome volunteers of their own: narrowsbg.org.