Brooklyn Greenway Initiative built the Naval Cemetery Landscape on the site of the former Naval Hospital Cemetery at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a place for retreat and remembrance while honoring its rich layers of natural and cultural history. This site was designed as a native plant meadow and pollinator habitat, and provides visitors with an escape from urban life. Many rare birds and insects can be seen here. There are magnifying glasses on site and visitors are encouraged to bring their own binoculars to observe the bird species from the boardwalk.
Please note that bike and scooter riding is not permitted at the NCL. As our site is a wildlife habitat, dogs are also not permitted on our grounds.
Learn about upcoming events at the Naval Cemetery Landscape
Pick up a self guided tour brochure at our entrance to learn more about our native meadow, the history of the NCL, and our site’s features. Follow up with our staff with your questions and observations!
Find the Nature Sacred Bench and journal behind our Sacred Grove and take a moment to sit, breathe, be present, and enjoy space in nature. Feel free to record your thoughts, observations, and reflections in the journal, or to explore others’ musings as you relax in the shade of our native trees.
The Naval Cemetery Landscape is excited to partner with Brooklyn Book Bodega on their mission to ensure that all children have access to and ownership of books. We invite you to come out to the NCL with your children this summer to pick up a free nature book from our bookshelf (1 per child). Follow this link to find reading tips from Brooklyn Book Bodega for children of all ages!
The Plant Heroes program is connecting young learners to nature, plants, and forest systems through engaging lessons and creative, science-oriented activities. We offer free resources including lessons, journal pages, field guides, and activity books for grades K-5.
Science skills are essential, and we believe nature education is for everyone — so Plant Heroes created ready-to-go lessons and activities to help educators and parents facilitate exploration and learning.
Bring your child and complete these together at the Naval Cemetery Landscape or take home activity books for grades K-5. Find out about plants, insects, forest health, ecology.
The Naval Cemetery Landscape is officially recognized as a Monarch Waystation by Monarch Watch, due to the amount of nectar rich annuals and milkweed varieties planted in the meadow. Monarch butterflies are in decline, due mostly to the lack of habitat and foraging resources along their migration routes. Pick up a Monarch Butterfly Coloring Page at the NCL to learn more about the Monarch Butterfly’s life cycle, its migration, and the importance of fostering native habitats as a way of helping this beloved insect!
From applicants familiar with the Landscape, we have selected three artists to create work inspired by the Naval Cemetery Landscape. The residencies will support the creation and development of new works or performances and culminates in an installation or performance, work of art, or series of artist-led programming at Naval Cemetery Landscape and focuses on the creation and development of original works of art (sculpture, video, music, theatre, written, visual, multi-disciplinary).
Artists have access to Naval Cemetery Landscape with some work space available in for the creation, development, and performance of new work. At the end of each residency, artists share their work in a public work-in-progress or completed performance or installation.
The residency provides time, space and support to artists in the development of their work and supports community and individual response to the many layers of history and ecology at the site.
Selected artists have familiarity with the site and have proposed works that explore (but not strictly limited to) the following themes:
1) The healing power of nature, the duality of natural/urban environments;
2) Contemplation and memorial in a former cemetery turned public space;
3) promoting opportunities for nature connection, mental wellness, or both for visitors to the NCL
4) naturalist observations on site: plant, insect and other wildlife, form, resource cycling, seasonal changes, phenology, species balance and distribution; human roles in site ecology
This is a unique opportunity in offering space for creating and presenting new work inspired by nature in New York City.
Funding for this program has been provided in part by Nature Sacred.
Dates: October 12, 2024
SamSam (she/they) is an artist and designer born and raised in NYC. She started birding in 2020 and although she was upset to notice so many dead birds, it led her to realize the vast array of species that are present in NYC alone. Her curiosity was sparked and in her pursuit of knowledge, the need to give back to the community became an important purpose. Sam Sam currently collaborates with NYC Plover Project, Local Nature Lab, and many other organizations to advocate for birds. Through her art using stickers, sculptures, zines, and other mixed media, she strives to connect folks to nature and introduce many more people into the world she so passionately reveres.
Proposed project: creation of NCL site specific plant zine. (Instagram)
Dates: December 7, 2024
Originally from Sausalito CA, Farah Marie Velten is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist who primarily works with visual arts practicing fine art photography that focuses on analogue and alternative printmaking processes, including cyanotype, anthotype, and more. She is a teaching artist with Josephine Herrick Project, a member of the teaching artist collective for The Nature School in Brooklyn and part of Field Meridians, an assistant teacher at International Center for Photography (ICP), and has a long history teaching art and workshops at many institutions. For her residency Farah will be exploring nature as the space within oneself and our relationship to the external space within the wider context and meanings of nature, both inside and outside of ourselves.
Proposed project: cyanotypes or other visual pieces with plants particularly invasive species with a reception event showcasing these pieces and either a public performance using cataloged and archived field recordings and an interactive component where guests of all ages and capabilities could create small works together with her and with each other to highlight the community aspect of the environment and initiative. Will lead some immersive strolls. (Website | Instagram)
Dates: Spring 2025
Rosa Bordallo is a Chamorro/CHamoru singer-songwriter from the island of Guam. Her musical compositions are often reflections upon grief, trauma, and resiliency. An indigenous Pacific Islander, she left her homeland of Guam in the early 2000s to study film in New York, aka Lenapehoking, where she has pieced together a life of working, child-rearing, music-making, zine-making, performance and activism. She has recorded several albums and EP’s as a solo artist under the moniker Manett, and as a member of the rock band, cholo. Her music can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp, and her sophomore solo album, Isidro, will be released in January 2025. For her artist residency at the NCL, she will explore the pre-Industrial history of the site, its impact on the natural environment and the Lenape tribes who first peopled it, and the ongoing traversals of humans, plants, and animals that make the landscape so special and fascinating. The residency will be used to create a series of cassette tapes that contain original music and spoken word, that will be accessible exclusively to the NCL and its visitors. (Spotify | Instagram)
Dates: September 14, 2023 and October 15, 2023
Artist Statement:
Jessica Dalrymple’s work is about how she see and value the landscape that surrounds her. Recent work celebrates nature in the city and advocates for urban green space, green infrastructure, and biodiversity. Jessica’s artistic mission is twofold: making object based artwork and creating art events that engage the community with nature in the city. This mission stems from the core belief that connecting more deeply with nature leads to improved health and well-being for all inhabitants and thereby the planet at large.
Jessica’s creative process begins by walking an area extensively and frequently as well as learning its history (and present state) through research and consultation with ecologists, naturalists, and horticulturists as well as sketching, photographing, and collecting specimens. Back at the studio, Jessica fuses all of the above with memory and digital imagery into compositions in oils and mixed media. In her oil paintings, Jessica balances expressive strokes with photo realism to both evoke the feeling of a park while accurately documenting its flora and fauna all in service of showcasing the natural beauty and ecology of New York City’s landscape.
Repurposing older works into new artwork is another component of Jessica’s studio practice. In an effort to reduce her artistic carbon footprint, Jessica strives to be more conscious of her consumption of art materials, have a zero waste policy in her studio, and create lightweight works that require less energy to store, display, and transport.
Dates: June 22 and July 29, 2023
Artist Statement: Local musician Paco Naveira showcases instrumental and vocal motifs on nylon string guitar. Paco performs ongoing compositions throughout the NCL with a small, portable amplifier attached to his body, sharing spontaneous musical and meditative moments with visitors on-site meant to resonate with the space’s unique environment.
Paco says of his first visit to the NCL: “my artistic aspiration is to become fully immersed and ‘enculturated’ in this one-of-a-kind urban yet spiritual landscape.” Check out his other work on Spotify, and his spirit-matters instrumental work here.
2023 Artist in Residence Events are funded by Nature Sacred.
Title: “Layers”
Artist: Aaron Asis
Dates: September 14 – October 24th 2021
Pieces: Large scale paper mural on the NCL entry facade displaying the pre-development landscape of the site. Inside, hundreds of black chalk stripes painted on the boardwalk represent pre-development patterns in the landscape.
Artist Statement: The installation is designed to showcase the past and remind us of the layered history beneath our feet. It consists of two parts: a large scale paper mural on the NCL entry wall displays the pre-development landscape surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Naval Cemetery Landscape site. Inside, hundreds of stripes along the boardwalk represent pre-development patterns in the landscape to demonstrate our human impact on the land. Footprints left along the chalked stripes will serve as marks to contemplate and honor the lives historically laid to rest on these grounds. These temporary installations are designed to acknowledge our human impact on the land and to inspire public attention, inquiry, and contemplation into the layered history of this site, the city, and our lives.
Title: “Solitude: In A Landscape”
Artist: Najee Wilson
Dates: August 26 – September 2nd, 2021
Pieces: Film, “Solitude: In A Landscape” projected onto the boardwalk, screened with a live score by musician Ben Brown, images printed on silk and nylon ripstock and hung on shepherd’s hooks throughout the meadow
Artist Statement: “Solitude: In A Landscape” is a celebration of bucolic beauty within an urban oasis, yearning for comfort and the nostalgic pleasures of enjoying nature made in reaction to the chaos of 2020.
Located on the eastern edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and accessed from the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway at Williamsburg St West between Kent and Flushing Avenues. We highly recommend taking public transportation, biking or walking to NCL.
B57/B62Bus to Flushing Av/Classon Av (2 min walk)
B48 Bus to Wallabout St/Wythe Av (5 min walk)
J/M/Z Train to Marcy Ave (11 min walk)
G train to Flushing Ave (13 min walk)
NYC Ferry East River Route, South Williamsburg Landing (15 min walk)
NYC Ferry Astoria Route, Brooklyn Navy Yard Landing (15 min walk)
