Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The experience

Fifty-two acres beside Prospect Park holding more than 14,000 kinds of plant, including a rose garden, a children's garden and climate-controlled glasshouses. Its calmest corner is the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, with waterfalls, a pond and a viewing pavilion, which empties out entirely once the cherry-blossom weeks are over. The garden is closed Mondays; in summer it stays open to 8:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and shuts at 6pm the rest of the week, with last entry 30 minutes before closing.

Go for the Japanese pond garden on a winter weekday, when it costs whatever you decide and there is nobody in it.

What a membership adds.

Everything above is free: the name, the photo, the rating, the exact spot. What members get is the part you can't Google: the sourced insider tip for this place (what to order, when to go, what to skip), every day of your trips unlocked in full with the insider tip on every researched stop, and the concierge at full strength, answering with your own insider tips, no daily meter.