Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

When the weather gets cold, NYC Urban Sketchers turns to some familiar, indoor standbys. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a gorgeous conservatory with a variety of environments and plants to sketch. A bonus: it's a twenty minute walk from my apartment to the south entrance. I nearly got a sketch in every room! I began in the Bonsai room, which houses only a small portion of their collection at a time (approximately 30 will be on display at any given time. They have about 350.). According to the website, the collection is the second largest in the country and one of the largest on display outside of Japan.

I went across the central area of the conservatory to the Aquatic area and sketched this lovely water lily.

I decided I couldn't leave without sketching a cactus, so the Desert room came next!

The desert room was colder than anticipated, so I migrated to the tropics.

I finished up the day in the warm temperature room, and decided before I bit off way more than I could chew that I would only do a small sprig of this mealy gum plant .