26 
Plantations and Grounds 
There is developing in this country “a more and more wide- 
spread realization of our need for beauty as well as efficiency in 
land adapted to our use—beauty not merely as a luxury but as a 
practical necessity and as much a matter of course as practical 
efficiency. . . 2” The quotation is from the official announcement 
of the School of Landscape Architecture of Harvard University. 
It may be a question as to whether beauty is ever a luxury, but 
there can be no question as to beauty being a practical necessity 
for a botanic garden, a park, or a city taken as a whole. Our 
problem, from the beginning, has been to develop the plantations 
ina way to make them beautiful and at the same time botanically 
educational. This has imposed certain limitations and restrictions. 
Landscaping could not proceed with the same freedom in the use 
x. The 
— 
of materials as in the planting of a private place or par 
number of visitors who come to enjoy the beauty of the Garden, 
as well as the almost daily presence of artists, during the flowering 
season, sketching and painting views as well as flowers, testify to 
the fact that the Garden 
beauty as well as of botanical interest. 
— 
as come to be considered as a place of 
— 
The Laboratory Plasa 
On January 14, the Commissioner of Parks, on behalf of the 
Botanic Garden, requested of the Board of Estimate and Ap- 
portionment approval of plans and specifications for repaving the 
— 
walks of the Laboratory Plaza, constructing a brass-line compass 
and meridians, and two stone posts at the west entrance to the 
Plaza, at a total estimated cost of $3,725.00. This request, as 
usual, was referred to the Committee of the Whole of the Board on 
January 23 and, on the recommendation of the Committee, the 
request was approved by the Board on March 12. 
After being publicly advertised for bids, the contract was 
awarded on April 14 to the lowest bidder, the Ross Galvanizing 
Works, Inc. (Albert Ross), of Brooklyn, whose bid was $3400. 
The highest of the five bids received was $4995. 
Work actually began on June 1, but the official time did not 
begin until June 17, the time allowed for completing the work being 
45 working days. The surfacing of the walks was rejected by the 
