Prospect Park Accuses the Brooklyn Botanic Garden of Attempting to Steal Away Their Nature Spirits

Prospect Park officials have lodged a complaint with Brooklyn Borough Hall against the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, claiming that the Garden is expanding their Shinto Shrine complex in an attempt to lure kami, nature spirits, away from the park. 

“They’ve always been jealous of the vast array of kami that have taken up residence in Prospect Park,” said Kumiko “Kiki” Hayashi, Prospect Parks’s Director of Kami Relations. “But to stoop to attempting to draw them into their own gardens is a surprising new low.”

Stealing from Prospect Park has nothing to do with it, says Brooklyn Botanic Garden Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden Supervisor Mike Crenshaw. “We’re just trying to keep the shrine area beautiful for the venerated spirits that are there already. If more choose to call our shrines home, that’s not up to us.”

Prospect Park officials are dubious, however, and point to the Botanic Garden’s 1997 attempt to lure the park’s cockatrices into their magnolia plaza. 

“The Botanical Gardens were under different management at that point,” says Crenshaw, “I can’t speak on that.”

Reached for comment, Wilson Robinson, Vice-Manager of Brooklyn Borough Hall’s Department of Green Space, says they have no plans to intervene.

“Yeah, we’re staying out of that,” said Robinson.