The City Parks Welcoming Immigrants

There’s an area in the northeast corner of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park that feels a little eerie if you come upon it by accident, as most do. The Rose Garden, as it’s called, is a long lawn with three empty fountain bases surrounded by trees and bushes. “It’s very secluded,” says Lucy Gardner, the communications and marketing manager for Prospect Park Alliance, a nonprofit that works with New York City to care for the park. “Visitors don’t usually spend a lot of time there.”

The Alliance is looking to change that. But it won’t be restoring the space to one of its earlier iterations, such as a playground or a literal rose garden. Rather, it is working with the communities who live around the park’s northeast border to find out what kind of space they would be most excited to use. Included in this population are immigrants, particularly those from the Caribbean and Latin America.