44 
MEMORIAL AND GIFT TREES 
3y C. Sruart GAGER 
“From time to time, since it was established, the Botanic Garden 
has been offered gifts of money to be used for planting a tree or 
providing some other object to be prominently placed and desig- 
nated by a bronze tablet or other suitable marker as a memorial 
to someone related to or greatly admired by the would-be donor, 
but concerning whom the proposed memorial would be the first 
intimation to the general public that such a person had existed. 
City authorities have had such proposals with reference to public 
squares and parks. The motive of the donor is of the highest, but 
it requires only a brief consideration to make clear the impropriety 
of placing such marked memorials in public places. After a thor- 
ough consideration of this matter, the Botanic Garden Govern- 
ing Committee, some time ago, adopted the following resolution : 
“Resolved, that no memorial inscriptions should be permitted 
within the Botanic Garden other than to those whose life and 
whose scientific, educational, or civic activities have been such as 
to entitle them to commemoration in public places.” (19th Annual 
Report of Brooklyn Botanic Garden. 1929.) 
Services to botanical science and in particular to the Brooklyn 
3otanic Garden may be recognized by suitable inscriptions on ap- 
proval of the Botanic Garden authorities. 
Of course when trees are presented to the Botanic Garden the 
name of the donor is designated on the label, just as the names of 
donors are acknowledged on the labels of gifts exhibited by 
museums. 
The grounds have now become so completely planted with trees 
and shrubs that there are no longer available any unoccupied loca- 
tions for memorial ¢ 
r gift trees, and the following plan was 
adopted nearly ten years ago. One wishing to present a tree may 
select any unassigned tree on the grounds and by payment of Fifty 
Dollars, may qualify as the donor of the tree, and may be so 
designated on the label. The donor thus has the advantage of 
— 
securing a tree that has become well established, avoiding the risk 
of success with a newly planted young tree. The donor—an in- 
SLES 
dividual or an organization—may, if he wishes, designate the tree 
