A major attraction at this 52-acre botanic garden, one of the finest in the country, is the beguiling Japanese Garden -- complete with a blazing red torii gate and a pond laid out in the shape of the Chinese character for "heart." The Japanese cherry arbor here turns into a breathtaking cloud of pink every spring, and the Cherry Blossom Festival is perhaps the park's most popular weekend event. You can also wander through the Cranford Rose Garden (5,000 bushes, 1,200 varieties); the Fragrance Garden, designed especially for the blind; the Shakespeare Garden, featuring more than 80 plants immortalized by the Bard (including many kinds of roses); and Celebrity Path, Brooklyn's answer to Hollywood's Walk of Fame, with the names of famous New Yorkers -- including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Mary Tyler Moore, Barbra Streisand, Mae West, and Maurice Sendak -- inscribed on stepping-stones. The Steinhardt Conservatory (PHONE: 718/623-7220; OPEN: Apr.-Sept., Tues.-Sun. 10-5:30; Oct.-Mar., Tues.-Sun. 10-4), a complex of handsome greenhouses, holds thriving desert, tropical, temperate, and aquatic vegetation, as well as a display charting the evolution of plants over the past 140 million years. The extraordinary C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum in the Conservatory exhibits about 80 miniature Japanese specimens. Free garden tours are given weekends at 1 PM, except for holiday weekends. Entrances to the garden are on Eastern Parkway, just outside the subway station; on Washington Avenue, behind the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and on Flatbush Avenue at Empire Boulevard. COST: $5; free Tues. and Sat. before noon. Subway: 2, 3 to Eastern Pkwy.; Q to Prospect Park.