It was mallets aforethought at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, as guests garbed in the styles of a century ago gathered to celebrate the oasis’ centennial.
The after-hours event, which was hosted by the Linnaean Libation League, featured croquet, cocktails and canapés meant to evoke the leisurely pleasures of 1910, when the Garden was founded.
The champagne flowed freely as dusk descended on one of the borough’s premier attractions, which was alive with the lusty sounds of ragtime and jazz that would have been familiar at the turn of the last century.
And guests in flowing dresses, huge, floppy hats and funky ties toasted each other and the garden, primed to kick off its next 100 years.
Of course, there was a birthday cake — the elegant creation of one of Brooklyn’s newest artisanal bakers, Elegantly Iced, served up at the garden’s gloriously Edwardian Palm House, an architectural confection whose fretted glass dome rises loftily above Washington Avenue near Montgomery Street.
Clearly, this is one grande dame who doesn’t mind telling her age!