Prospect Park Waterfall - finished

The forest was planted in 1867, as part of the master design of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, the creators of Central Park.

Back then, it was hard to imagine that the seedlings would eventually grow to create a dense forest. But almost 150 years later, it's a reality. Spreading about 150 acres, it's the last remaining natural forest in Brooklyn.

"It's a hardwood forest. Not many evergreens, and it's a native forest,” said landscape architect Christian Zimmerman. “Mostly native plant material that has been here for a long, long time."
Within the forest, behind the rocks at the Fallkill Waterfall, is the source of the water in the park – a faucet that pumps in city tap water. The water flow is connected through an intricate system of pools, streams and waterfalls which culminate in the 60-acre lake.
"It comes through that first waterfall and out it goes through the whole system,” said Thomas. “So it's pretty amazing. And it's just gravity-fed, there's no pumping or electrical needs of the entire system."

Every one of the park's water features is man made. Olmsted and Vaux wanted to mirror as closely as possible the natural tendencies of water. Over time, the waterfalls did fall into disrepair, But a woodlands restoration project about a decade ago helped re-build them.

"Part of that is looking at historic photographs that we have within our archive,” said Thomas.

“And we would number the rocks. We'd identify them from the historic photographs and then we slowly, through mechanical means, bringing in big cranes, lift them up and re-set them. So the waterfall that you see behind us is a match to what it was historically."
Prospect Park also collects all the rainwater from as far as the Brooklyn Museum into an underground assortment of catch basins and caves to feed into its water system.

From " Brooklyn's Hidden Treasures " NY1