Cider, Pumpkins and a Drum Parade Fill a Brooklyn Garden
Cider first, pumpkin art next, then a 3 PM drum-led costume parade at Brooklyn Botanic Garden's festival-only Saturday.
🍂 Saturday Across the Garden
🍎 Start at the Cider Garden
Saturday, October 24 runs 11 AM to 5 PM with last entry at 4:30 PM, and it needs a Fall Harvest Festival ticket, since the garden offers no regular admission that day. Adults pay 38 dollars and children under 12 enter free, while food and drinks cost extra. Start on the Cherry Esplanade, where a pop-up beer and cider garden pours a 16 oz Hudson North Apple Pie cider for 11 dollars beside hay bales and lawn games. A hot dog is 8.50, and the Water Garden cider press lets you try a sample.
🎃 Then Find the Pumpkins
Walk on to the Plant Family Collection, where the Maniac Pumpkin Carvers turn ordinary pumpkins into detailed art as a live demonstration and share tips for carving at home. Kids can decorate a mini pumpkin or gourd to take home while supplies last, and the Discovery Garden has giant papier mâché pumpkins to paint. Outside food and drinks stay out, apart from water and baby bottles.
🥁 3 PM: Batalá Leads the Parade
At 3 PM the all-womxn, Black-led percussion ensemble Batalá New York leads a costume parade for all ages, part of the Plant Family Collection program. The garden invites guests to come in their best flannel or a costume, though oversized props and realistic-looking weapons are not allowed in. On Saturday, take the 2 or 3 to Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum for the 990 Washington Avenue entrance, or the Q to Prospect Park for the 455 Flatbush Avenue entrance. The B does not run on weekends. BBG lists parking that day at 27 dollars, paid on entry, in a lot shrunk by construction.
