At Green-Wood Cemetery, remembrance and renewal live side by side—where concerts echo through centuries, and quiet paths invite you to linger.

You do not come to Green-Wood Cemetery for spectacle. You wander toward something quieter—something that holds the moment. As spring and summer seasons spill across Brooklyn, this National Historic Landmark becomes more than a resting place. It is a stage, a classroom, a garden, and a gathering ground for community, contemplation, and culture.

Walk through its iron gates and you will feel the shift. The air is different here—slower, softer. Rose-covered arches give way to winding hills, ancient trees, and unexpected corners of calm. You will pass artists sketching beneath willow trees, couples lying in the grass, visitors pausing not in mourning, but in quiet awe.

And Green-Wood Cemetery has always known how to hold space for both beauty and meaning. This season, it invites you to take part in something more rooted. As spring lingers and eventually gives way to summer, programming unfolds with the same care and rhythm as the grounds themselves.

Think candlelit music performances tucked between mausoleums, guided strolls that uncover the stories beneath the stones, and solstice evenings that blend poetry with twilight walks. Evenings of live chamber music spill out into the dusk, while yoga sessions at the hilltop shift your gaze skyward. There is something here for everyone, whether it is your first or fiftieth visit.

About Green-Wood Cemetery

Founded in 1838, Green-Wood Cemetery is more than a final resting place—it is one of the most remarkable cultural landmarks in New York City. Designated a National Historic Landmark, its 478 acres of rolling hills, winding paths, and world-class statuary are home to over 570,000 permanent residents and draw more than half a million visitors annually.

But Green-Wood is also alive in a different way: it functions as an outdoor museum, an urban arboretum, and a center for civic engagement. From arts and culture to environmental stewardship, its year-round programming invites New Yorkers—and the world—to experience history, memory, and nature in profound and unexpected ways.

📌 Learn more at green-wood.com.

Green-Wood Cemetery: A Different Kind of Spring & Summer Escape

Forget the beach crowds. Green-Wood’s rolling hills, flowering trees, and tranquil paths offer an almost cinematic city escape. But this is not just about silence—it is about resonance. Green-Wood’s programming is curated with intention—never rushed, never performative. It blends nature, history, and art in ways that feel grounded in place. The events are not here to entertain you—they’re here to transform you. Slowly. Gently. Quietly.

Sunday in the Green-Wood Cemetery

📅 Date: May 4

Do not let the name fool you—this open-house gathering is one of the cemetery’s most heartfelt and thoughtful seasonal events. Designed to bring comfort, not heaviness. It opens up conversations around end-of-life care, grief, and remembrance. You will find expert-led talks, hands-on workshops, and quiet walks through spring blooms—all curated by leaders in funeral arts, death education, and community care. Topics range from green burials to grief writing, with space to reflect, connect, and maybe shift your perspective.

Free Juneteenth Family Tours 

📅 Date: June 19

Green-Wood Cemetery honors Black history with free, family-friendly walking tours that center the stories of Black New Yorkers laid to rest here. These tours are more than educational—they are moving reminders of the legacies that helped shape Brooklyn and beyond. A beautiful way to mark the day with intention, whether you’re attending with kids or coming solo.

Birding in Peace

📅 Date: Sunday mornings | Ongoing through the season

Before the city fully stirs, Green-Wood Cemetery becomes a sanctuary of sound and stillness. Birding in Peace invites early risers into the cemetery’s quieter corners for guided walks led by expert birders. Expect sightings of warblers, tanagers, and woodpeckers—alongside moments of gentle awe. No experience necessary, just a willingness to slow down and look up.

Music, Memory & the Art of Gathering

Some of the most unexpected and moving performances in Brooklyn happen not in concert halls—but in the quiet hills of Green-Wood Cemetery. Here, music becomes memory, echoing across headstones and tree canopies, sometimes just steps away from the final resting places of the composers themselves.

The Memorial Day Concert 

📅 Date: May 26

Now in its 25th year, this beloved tradition brings the ISO Symphonic Band—composed of gifted high school musicians—to Green-Wood Cemetery for an afternoon of music that bridges past and present. Visitors are invited to bring a picnic, settle in on the grass, and take in stirring renditions of works by Leonard Bernstein, Fred Ebb, James Weldon Johnson, and more. It is not just a performance—it is a moment of community remembrance, held in one of Brooklyn’s most beautiful open-air settings.

The Moth Mainstage

📅 Date: June 12

For one night only, The Moth brings its iconic storytelling series to Green-Wood. Five storytellers and a featured musical act take the stage for an evening of raw, unscripted tales—recorded live for The Moth Radio Hour and Podcast. Set beneath the stars and surrounded by the stillness of the grounds, this is storytelling at its most intimate and transportive.

 A Night at Niblo’s Garden

📅 Date: July 10 | July 11

FEqual parts magical and surreal, this annual event reimagines the Victorian pleasure garden once operated by Green-Wood resident William Niblo. Expect circus performers, vaudeville acts, and live music tucked around Crescent Water. The atmosphere is whimsical, a little eerie, and totally enchanting. Bring a blanket, some snacks [or a bottle of wine], and surrender to the spectacle.

Trolley Tours, Revolutionary Tales & Queer Lineages

Green-Wood Cemetery does not just preserve history—it makes it personal. Through guided tours that span centuries, identities, and quiet revolutions, it invites visitors to see the city’s story etched in stone, sculpture, and soil.

The Gay Green-Wood Cemetery Trolley Tour

📅 Date: June 28

More than a tour, this is a moving tribute to the LGBTQ+ trailblazers buried at Green-Wood—artists, activists, visionaries, and rebels whose legacies continue to shape the soul of the city. The Gay Green-Wood Trolley Tour honors lives once lived on the margins, reminding us that queerness has always been a vital thread in New York’s cultural fabric. Come for the history, stay for the pride.

Patriots of the Past +  Soldiers and Sacrifice

📅 Date: May 3 | June 7

These themed tours offer a deeply human look at the Revolutionary War and Civil War stories rooted in Green-Wood’s landscape. With stops at the graves of veterans and key historical figures, Patriots of the Past [May 3] and Soldiers and Sacrifice [June 7] explore how Brooklyn figured into the larger American narrative—through lives lived, battles fought, and sacrifices remembered.

Discover Green-Wood Trolley Tour

📅 Date: Every Saturday

If you are new to Green-Wood or simply want a deeper dive, this sweeping weekly tour uncovers the cemetery’s most iconic spots. Famed monuments, striking architecture, notable residents, and breathtaking vistas. It is a beautiful entry point to understanding why Green-Wood is more than a resting place—it is a living museum.

Nature, Grief & the Sacred Ordinary

Green-Wood’s seasonal programming is not designed to impress—it is designed to connect. With nature as teacher and grief as guide, these events invite stillness, curiosity, and a different way of relating to the world around [and within] us.

Bugging Out,  PollinaTours, And The Language of Flowers

📅 Date: May 17 | June 14 | June 28

Curious about Brooklyn’s wild side? These nature-forward programs offer fresh ways to engage with the cemetery’s living ecosystem. Bugging Out [May 17] dives into the insect world. PollinaTours [June 14] explores native pollinators and their habitats. The Language of Flowers [June 28] reveals the hidden meanings in the cemetery’s flora—from living blooms to the carved vines and blossoms etched into headstones.

Nocturnal Navigators

📅 Date: June 20

Not all visitors to Green-Wood Cemetery come during the day. Nocturnal Navigators takes you on a moonlit walk exploring the cemetery’s bat population, shedding light on these misunderstood creatures and their role in urban ecology.

Grieving & Weaving and Death Café

📅 Date: June 9 | June 18 | July 14 | August 12

These events make space for emotional literacy and intentional presence. Grieving & Weaving [June 9, July 14, August 12] offers a quiet community through fiber arts, where crocheting and knitting become gentle acts of remembrance. Death Café [June 18] welcomes conversation around mortality in a casual, comforting setting—tea, pastries, and the kind of honesty that rarely finds a home elsewhere.

Zen & The Art of Filming Family Interviews

📅 Date: June 17

Some stories only get told once—this workshop helps you capture them with care. Led by thoughtful facilitators, this session teaches how to record interviews with loved ones in ways that feel natural, respectful, and emotionally rich. It is not about perfection—it is about presence. A beautiful entry point for anyone looking to preserve memory with intention.

Exploring NYC’s Green-Wood Cemetery: A Place That Holds It All

Green-Wood Cemetery is many things at once: a sacred site, an evolving classroom, a space for creative expression, and a civic gathering. It is where Revolutionary War soldiers rest alongside queer icons. Where night-blooming plants draw bats from the sky. Where strangers talk about death over dessert.

This spring and summer, it invites you not just to attend, but to belong.

Whether you are here for a trolley ride or a storytelling night, a sunset bat walk or a sketch-comedy picnic, there is a quiet reverence that lingers. A sense that Brooklyn holds more than what it shows on the surface.

That maybe—the most vibrant parts of the city are the ones still whispering.

📌 For the full schedule, check Green‑Wood’s events calendar.

Plan Your Visit to Green-Wood Cemetery

📍 Green-Wood Cemetery
500 25th Street—Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn | Hours: 7 AM–7 PM [extended through summer]
Take the R train to 25th Street Station
Most events require advance registration: 🔗 → https://www.green-wood.com/visit/

Just beyond the Green-Wood Cemetery gates, the charming streets of Park Slope await—excellent for a post-tour stroll or a bite to eat. [Explore our Park Slope Neighborhood Guide]