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School gardens in Brooklyn have been encouraged, and a chil- 
dren’s garden exhibit with about 2,000 exhibitors was held every 
year through 1925, with prizes awarded from funds donated for 
the purpose by Mr. White. These school exhibits were discon- 
tinued in 1925 because school and home gardening seemed to be 
1 1930, a medal was awarded for 
well established. Beginning 1 
several years to all schools having gardens up to a certain standard. 
It is impossible for the schools to teach all their botany or nature 
study through lectures, visits, or demonstrations at the Garden, 
or by lectures in the classroom given by Garden instructors. 
Hence plant material is needed by the classroom teachers for in- 
struction. The supply service, through which materials are given, 
lent, or sold to the school, greatly increases the opportunity of the 
Garden for school service. Assistance is given to nearly 7,000 
teachers and over half a million children by means of living plants 
and plant parts and dried or preserved specimens for study. 
Every year one member of the staff presses, mounts, and labels 
hundreds of specimens of common flowers, weeds, and tree leaves 
and fruits for the schools. 
In the spring of 1914, school principals were notified that the 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden would supply penny packets of seeds to 
pupils for backyard gardens. The request for 26,000 penny 
packets which was received, although pleasing to the Garden staff, 
presented a serious problem, since only 1,000 envelopes of seed 
had been prepared. It was, however, successfully handled, and 
over 5,000 Brooklyn children planted their own gardens at home 
or in school in 1914. In 1941, distribution of the seed’ packets 
passed well over the million mark. 
The children’s work has had wide educational publicity not only 
in this country but in lands across the sea. It was presented to 
educators and scholars at London University in 1931. Since the 
Garden was established, its lectures and classes have been at- 
tended by over 2,500,000 pupils and teachers. The Botanic 
Garden now has contacts with ninety-eight per cent of the ele- 
mentary and all of the junior high schools in Brooklyn, as well 
as with many outside the Borough. Thus the correlation with the 
local schools functions through lectures and demonstrations to 
visiting classes and to classes at the schools; through the supply 

