What's Up With That Fenced-Off Cabbage Patch in McCarren Park?

MCCARREN PARK, BROOKLYN — Venture to the outer edges of Prospect Park's darker sister to the north, past the napping hipsters and exotic carnivores and hardcore kickball captains, and you might find yourself peering through a black chain-link upon an unlikely sight: an idyllic cove of fertile soil, filled with row upon row of cabbage plants.

'Tis no mirage. Over the past few months, a local nonprofit called the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund has, in tandem with the city's GrowNYC program and an increasing number of neighbors, been nurturing a crop of adorable little cabbages.

It's called the McCarren Park Demonstration Garden. ("Demonstration" because it's supposed to serve as an example for city dwellers who want to learn how to garden, grow their own food and just have a better relationship with the land in general.)

More than 80 different varieties of cabbage are currently growing in the garden, and are almost ready to be harvested, according to city officials.

Come spring 2017, the garden will open full-time to the public.

Once it's open, "school groups, senior centers, and other community members will be able to plant and maintain whatever they like such as food from around the world, flowers, or food for their own kitchens," City Councilman Steve Levin, who represents much of North Brooklyn at City Hall, wrote in his email newsletter this week.

Also being built within the chain-link — located between Leonard Avenue and the McCarren Park Pool — are a series of brightly painted picnic benches and a stone replica of an ironclad warship constructed in Greenpoint in 1861, at the onset of the Civil War.

And just to the south, the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund is constructing a full "green infrastructure corridor" that will eventually be able to capture more than 200,000 gallons of polluted stormwater per year and clean it before it enters nearby rivers and oceans.

We'll always love the cabbages most, though. How cute are these guys: