McCarren Park's 35 acres are some of New York City's most active park spaces. Unlike the other park spaces, The Green Dome Community Garden provides a quieter-oasis throughout the peak summer months. Volunteer gardeners work all-year round to care for its plants and keep the space open for the public. While other parts of McCarren Park are used for a variety of sports and group activities, people generally congregate in the Green Dome Community Garden to sit on one of the multiple benches that have been placed amongst the densely planted greenery. The Green Dome Community Garden also serves an important environmental function in the neighborhood, as it provides a place for local restaurants and households to bring their compostable waste to fertilize the plants.

Founded in 1997 by a local resident who wanted to beautify a neglected section of his local park, The Green Dome Garden is a 2,500 square foot lot in McCarren Park between the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. The New York City Parks Department became involved in the project through their GreenThumb program, which provided local volunteers with gardening education as well as supplies and materials, and placed them in the largest network of community gardens in North America. Since its founding, the garden has been open to the public from 10AM to dusk every day and continues to be entirely volunteer-run. The Green Dome Garden serves as both a garden and a venue for community-organized events, contributing to a diverse network of green spaces and uses in McCarren Park. Through the time and effort of local volunteers from Greenpoint and Williamsburg, this once-neglected lot was successfully transformed into a vibrant community space.

Image credits, from left: Tom Blackwell via Flickr, lutmans via Flickr, YorkshirePhotoWalks via Flickr