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Children’s Classes—The registration in the children’s classes 
at the Garden always will be comparatively small. These 
classes include those of spring and fali greenhouse work, six 
classes covering six weeks each, and the outdoor garden courses 
continuing over a period of six months. During the year of 1915 
the registration figure for this work was 475. One might im- 
mediately question this figure and ask why we do not cut down 
the length of the long summer course and so double our figures. 
The answer is briefly this: that we are working educationally and 
not numerically. That is, the Botanic Garden is training up a 
body of boys and girls whose knowledge is somewhat compre- 
hensive and who, at the same time, are growing into the life and 
understanding of the institution. This figure may be doubled and 
quadrupled when the present capacity of the building and green- 
houses is increased 
It might be well to state here that some of these boys and girls 
who came into the first classes are working with us on special 
botanical topics independent of class periods. These are students 
now in our local High Schools. What it may mean in the future 
to the city of Brooklyn, and to this special institution, to have a 
large number of young citizens intelligent and loyal to its civic 
work is worth consideration. The class work at the Garden is 
planned purposely to react on the home and school. Children in 
many of our outdoor gardens last summer entirely supplied their 
home tables with fresh vegetables during the season; home 
gardens have been planted from seedlings raised in the spring 
greenhouse classes; various school gardens have received hun- 
dreds of young Rate homes have had blossoming plants—gifts 
from young sons and daughters; one boy’s father moved from a 
congested neighborhood in Brooklyn to the country so that his 
son might have larger opportunities for work. As a direct result 
of our work, more than one family removal has come about so 
that a child might have a yard; and one lad had a present of an 
acre of land because of good class work in the Garden greenhouse. 
Cooperation with Schools—And yet the other side of the ques- 
tion is imperative too, that of reaching out and teaching large 
numbers of boys and girls. We have tried to meet this demand 
in two ways: first, by offering to give special short courses to a 
