18 
a garden area, a botanic garden meets an important need of its 
community. 
A Botanic Garden is More than a Garden 
3ut a botanic garden is much more than a garden; its work 
includes all activities that may grow out of or be correlated with 
gardens. We have frequently stated that the work of the Brook- 
lyn Botanic Garden ineludes anything scientific or educational 
based upon plant life. We have not, of course, realized this ideal 
in its fullness but, to paraphrase Browning, an institution’s reach 
must exceed its grasp, and nothing that comes within the broad 
ideal above stated is foreign to our interest nor to our active sup- 
port, so far as our resources and equipment permit. 
Public Response 
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was organized in 1910 in a com- 
munity of nearly two million inhabitants but without any provision 
whatever, outside of the public and private schools, for assisting 
people to a knowledge of plant life or gardening, or for stim- 
ulating or fostering the desire for such knowledge. The steady 
increase of attendance from not more than 10,000 a year to more 
than 1,100,000 a year, in less than seventeen years, shows how 
great was the need for such opportunity, and how prompt and 
generous was the response. 
Practical Planning 
The Garden was not planned along theoretical lines but, first 
of all, a survey was made of existing educational and scientific 
agencies to see how, if at all, their work could be supplemented 
or enriched. And then account was taken of needs not met at all, 
and the endeavor was made to organize a botanic garden to meet 
those needs and fill the gaps. 
School Service a Primary Aim 
To enrich the teaching of nature study, botany, and geography 
in the public schools became a primary aim. The multifarious 
nature of the resulting program, and the extent of the need as in- 
dicated by the response, are shown in the table on page 19. 
