Just in time for the good weather, Hancock Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn is getting spruced up. Planters along the block of brownstones are filled with purple petunias, thanks to the efforts of the Hancock Neighborhood Block Association.

And the pocket garden at 392 Hancock St. has just reopened after a total redesign by the Manhattan-based interior designer Elissa Cullman, of the design firm Cullman & Kravis. Ms. Cullman found the park in need of care through Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, and she decided to do something special in memory of her late friend and business partner, Helene Diane Kravis Ruger.

Now her partner’s name is engraved in a circular stone on the ground of the garden.

“She was very interested in landscape gardening,” Ms. Cullman, standing on a square of freshly trimmed grass, said. “I have never been a gardener.”

To design the project, Ms. Cullman approached the space as she would an interior room, she said. She created a formal entrance at the front, and a living area with table and chairs at the back. She worked on the project with a set designer, David Korins, and an associate in Ms. Cullman’s design firm, Alyssa Miller. It is not the only collaborative effort of hers lately: She has also just published a book, “Decorating Master Class: The Cullman & Kravis Way” written with another designer in the firm, Tracy Pruzan. The book is dedicated to Kravis Ruger, too.

Ms. Cullman had several friends come in from Manhattan for the dedication yesterday, but the guest she was most happy to see was her partner’s daughter, Kimberly Kravis Schulhof.

Ms. Kravis Schulhof stepped into the garden yesterday with the sun shining, stopping almost immediately to read the dedication to her mother.

“This was her favorite time of year, and it is mine too,” Ms. Kravis Schulhof said. “It’s appropriate we’re all here to celebrate.” She noted it was the season for her mother’s favorite flowers, peonies.

The Hancock Neighborhood Block Association will be celebrating the new Garden of Hope on Saturday, when it will also hold a plant sale and a bake sale. The secretary of the association, Gogetta Belton, who has lived on the block for 43 years, plans to sell her sweet potato pie.

agordon@nysun.com