HORTICULTURAL DIVISION 671 



season. Because of the great expense this entails for temporary effects, 

 such planting should be kept at a minimum, being used only when ample 

 funds are available and where it adds materially to the public interest. 



Conservatories for permanent collections of tender plants or for the 

 temporary exhibit of popular flowers are warranted only where large appro- 

 priations are available. Careful preparations during many months are 

 necessary for these special shows. The installation of conservatories in a 

 park system should be weighed in the same way as the development of a 

 playground system, the building of an athletic field, the establishment of 

 a zoological collection or the construction of an aquarium. The initial cost 

 of such undertakings may seem large but the maintenance is burdensome 

 until the city is really ready to finance them properly from year to year. 



Maintenance. The horticultural maintenance of a park system is synony- 

 mous with park maintenance over the major portion of the park depart- 

 ment. Intensive play areas, the care of much used service buildings and 

 other special features are the only exceptions. The maintenance of the 

 park areas must usually be on a twofold basis, the local and the special. 

 Local maintenance has to do with a man or a group of men maintaining a 

 definite park area while the special maintenance involves a gang of men, 

 usually with special equipment or with special training, who perform a 

 particular kind of work throughout the park system. A spraying gang or 

 a pruning gang is an example of the latter. 



The type of park development and the intensity and continuity of 

 use are important factors in determining the character of maintenance. A 

 park with open lawns enclosed by masses of shrubs sufficiently remote from 

 the centers of population to be used only in summer may be maintained at 

 far less expense than a park of formal design or with many flower beds, or 

 one near the business center that is likely to be used almost every day in 

 the year. A park in which natural woodlands and open meadows predomi- 

 nate, in which cutting the grass two or three times a season and cleaning 

 out dead wood constitute the principal items of maintenance, takes but 

 little of the appropriation. 



It is probably best to have some one in charge of each unit or separate 

 portion of the park system. The smaller units would be handled by a good 

 workman while larger parks would be handled by a foreman with a gang 

 of men. The area that one man can handle varies with the type of park 

 development and the man. A park of five acres with mass plantings of 

 shrubbery without flower beds, but with the lawns much broken by trees, 

 can often be handled by one man. If most of the ground could be mowed 

 with a power lawn mower a larger area could be tended. A half acre of 

 flower beds is usually all one man can keep in good condition. 



