Cohosh
The image on this courtyard wall was found in the soil of Brooklyn rather than brought to it.
Conversations between Mona Caron, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center narrowed the search to plants indigenous to Brooklyn, and settled on Black Cohosh, a native woodland plant. Mona painted it at the scale of the courtyard wall, and the same plant was set into the building’s landscaping, so the painting and the living plant grow side by side.
The mural is less a decoration than a reminder of what the ground once held. For the people who now live around it, it offers a breathing space and a quiet sense of being rooted here.