We have attempted roughly to classify the lands of the Botani- 

 cal Garden according to the types of landscape treatment as 

 affecting maintenance costs; grouping them in three classes: 

 Class i 



% to 2 acres per man, as in type "e" and part of 

 type "d." 

 Class 2 



2 to 6 acres per man, as in part of type "d" and in 

 type "c." 

 Class j 



6 to 1 8 acres per man, as in type "b." 

 Note: As will be seen, the first class would be likely to 

 require on the average about three times as much labor 

 per acre as the second, and the second about three times 

 as much per acre as the third. 

 This classification is not based primarily on the amount of 

 maintenance labor now applied to the several areas in the Botani- 

 cal Garden, because that is manifestly (but in widely varying 

 degree) insufficient for properly maintaining the sort of treatment 

 which appears to have been attempted. Neither is it based on 

 an arbitrary assumption of our own as to what conditions it 

 would be ideally desirable to create and maintain on each area. 

 We recognize that your own organization has in the past "bit 

 off" more than it is able properly to "chew" under present condi- 

 tions of cost and of funds available for maintenance; and our clas- 

 sification of areas was based on what each area was apparently 

 intended to be. Knowing from experience elsewhere about how 

 much labor is apt to be required for maintaining various types 

 of landscape treatment in reasonably good condition under 

 reasonably efficient and skilful management, we have thus 

 arrived at a rough estimate of the amount of labor which would 

 be required to maintain properly what you have already " bit off." 

 This is a starting-point for all the rest of our discussion. Ob- 

 viously by abandoning some of the things already attempted 

 which are relatively costly of maintenance, thus transferring 

 some areas from a more costly to a less costly classification, our 

 estimates could be cut without sacrifice of quality in the mainte- 

 nance of each kind of area. And, on the other hand, any addition 

 of new features tending to raise any piece of land from a cheaper 

 maintenance type to a more costly maintenance type would call 

 for a corresponding increase in the maintenance force. 



Taking the Botanical Garden as it is, then, and assuming the 

 proper upkeep of the sort of thing that appears to have been 



[8] 



