The Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library celebrated the long-awaited opening of an outdoor garden on Saturday.
Councilman Brad Lander [D–Park Slope] marked the occasion by cutting a ribbon of flowers with help from a few precocious tots, and the occasion — like the garden itself — was adorable, according to the lawmaker.
“The garden itself is super, super cute, a really very joyful public space, and the kids were running around — it was great,” Lander said.
The roughly basketball-court-sized library garden features a lawn surrounded by trees, benches, and shrubbery, along with stone seating organized amphitheater style to accommodate public readings for lit fans young and old.
Unlike some library projects, the reading garden proceeded at a brisk two-year pace from funding to completion, with construction lasting less than year from when the first shovel hit dirt in July last year.
The library is also looking to make the new garden home to a statue of Knuffle Bunny, the beloved creation of the formerly Brooklyn-based children’s author Mo Willems, who recounted the tale of the hapless stuffed animal’s adventure at the laundromat in “Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale.”
But the decision to install the beloved children’s character in a garden largely designed for children falls to the Public Design Commission, the city’s artistic gatekeepers are yet to sign off on whether or not the bunny’s likeness is appropriate for the library’s green space.
