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Department of Public Instruction 
First Course of Instruction —The first course of instruction to 
be offered at the Garden by a member of the staff was on Indoor 
Plant Culture, given on five successive Wednesdays, beginning 
October 22. 
Prospectus for 1914.—A prospectus of courses of instruction 
and public lectures to be offered during 1914 is in the hands of 
the printer, and will appear in the Garden Recorp for January, 
1914. ‘Twenty-nine different courses are offered, covering work 
from the most elementary nature study to that of independent 
research. 
Children’s Gardens —Broadly stated, the aim of a botanic gar- 
den is the increase and diffusion of a knowledge and love of 
plants. Every activity, therefore, which will contribute to this 
end is appropriate and desirable. It is in harmony with this aim 
that a botanic garden should not only be well equipped for scien- 
tific investigations, but should be made as attractive and beautiful 
as possible. It is in the interests of the same ideal that children’s 
gardens have been planned as a regular part of our work, to begin 
in the spring of 1914 
No educational development of recent times has done more to 
enlist the sympathetic interest of children in plant life than this 
movement, variously designated as school gardens, school farms, 
farm gardens, and children’s gardens. The appeal is made at the 
most impressionable age, the ground covered embraces the ele- 
ments of many phases of botanical science, including ecology, 
physiology, plant structure, and horticulture, the educational re- 
sults to be secured are not surpassed by those obtainable by any 
other discipline, and the indirect value of the work, especially for 
the city boy or girl, who is deprived of most of the peculiar 
advantages of out-of-door life and intimate contact with nature 
which the village or country child enjoys, is incalculable. A person 
who has been brought up from childhood to regard a botanic gar- 
den as a place of interest, of pleasure, and of profit, and to regard 
its activities as having a direct and intimate relation to his own 
life and to the life of the city as a whole, is not as liable as he 
otherwise might be, and as many otherwise intelligent and broad- 
minded persons now are, to question the advantages of such insti- 

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