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Children’s Building 
This is located in the northern part of the Children’s Garden 
plot and contains a conference room, and rooms for the storage of 
garden tools and implements. The furniture in the conference 
room was a gift from Mrs. James H. Post. Various collections 
of plants, seeds, and insects of economic importance in the garden 
are accessible here for consultation by the children. A garden 
library, a gift of friends, has been added. North of the Children’s 
Building is a plot planted to ornamental shrubs and herbaceous 
perennials for the instruction of the children. 
Children’s Garden 
A plot of about three-quarters of an acre in the southeast part 
of the Botanic Garden is devoted to the theoretical and practical 
instruction of children in gardening. The larger part of this area 
is laid out in garden plots which will accommodate about 200 
children. At the south end is a Shakespeare Garden, given by 
Mrs. Henry W. Folger. 
Non-Botanical Educational Features 
Meridian Panel—In 1931 there was placed in the paved walk 
in front of the main west entrance to the Laboratory Building a 
Terrestrial Position Panel, briefly referred to as the “ Meridian 
Panel.” This panel, of black Belgian marble terrazzo, is 21 feet, 
2 inches long, and 5 feet wide. It contains a brass strip, 20 feet 
long and % inch wide, laid along the geographical meridian, the 
location of which was accurately determined by Mr. Weld Arnold, 
then of the School of Surveying of the American Geographical 
Society, but now of the School of Geography, Harvard University. 
Another brass strip, 18% feet long and 54 inch wide, marking 
the magnetic meridian, crosses the geographical meridian at an 
angle of 11° 11’. The data at the ends of the meridians are as 
follows: 
At the North End: 
Magnetic north. Variation 11° 11° west in 1931 
Annual increase 4’ 
At the South End: 
Altitude above mean sea level, 115 feet 
