REPORT ON 

 THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



August, 1924 

 Dr. Frederic S. Lee, President, 

 Board of Managers, 

 New York Botanical Garden, 

 New York City. 



Dear Sir: 



This Report* is submitted at your request to set forth the results 

 to date of our investigation and study of the grounds of the 

 Botanical Garden, as a basis for comprehensive plans for their 

 improvement. It is a revision, in the light of further discussion 

 and study, of a preliminary report, made in December, 1923. 



This investigation was set on foot because of an impression, 

 voiced in your Statement of April, 1923, that the grounds of the 

 Botanical Garden are much less beautiful and much less attractive 

 and valuable to the general public, and especially to that part 

 of the public particularly interested in gardening, in gardens and 

 in landscape beauty, than is reasonably to be expected in the 

 leading institution of its kind in the metropolis of the United 

 States. 



Our investigation has emphatically confirmed this impression, 

 has defined its particulars in many respects, and has begun to 

 make clear the means by which this condition can best be changed 

 to a really satisfactory one. 



For the purpose of this Report the defects can best be considered 

 incidentally and in connection with the probable means of over- 

 coming them by positive constructive measures directed toward 

 making the Garden by degrees more and more excellent, on the 

 assumption that means can be found to carry forward such pro- 

 gressive improvement in an orderly, well-balanced and reasonably 

 rapid way without any arbitrary limit on the extent of the im- 

 provement. 



As already indicated, this Report is to be regarded as a progress 

 report, as a step toward the adoption of a general program in 

 accordance with which definite plans for improvement may be 

 successively elaborated in the necessary degree of detail. 



*The reading of this Report will be facilitated by consulting Maps A and B, which follow the 

 text. 



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