The Conservatory is divided into seven rooms, each with a dif- 
ferent temperature and humidity. There are, in addition, 13 propa- 
gating houses, 400 sashes of hot beds and cold frames, a potting shed, 
and 5 supply sheds making up the plant. The propagating houses are 
used for growing plants until they are ready for exhibition: for propa- 
gating plants to be used in the great outdoor plantings in the West 
Chicago Parks; for nursing sickly specimens back to health; and for 
developing spores, seeds, cuttings, and seedlings into specimen plants 
for the Show, Palm, Fern, Aeroid, Warm, Economic, and Bay Houses. 
The cold frames and hot beds are used for propagating such plants as 
do not require to be kept under glass the year round. Many of these 
plants are used to keep up the display in the Show House: others for 
the plantings in the various parks. The supply sheds are used for the 
storage of pots, tubs, compost, and equipment of all sorts. 
The walks and the original plantations of the Conservatory were 
designed by Mr. Jens Jensen, who was landscape architect for the build- 
ing. The present plantations of the Conservatory are the work of 
Mr. August Koch. 
: In 1912, the West Parks Board appointed Mr. August Koch, of 
the Missouri Botanical Gardens, as chief florist, in charge of the Con- 
servatory and of all outdoor plantings within the West Chicago Parks. 
There are in the world, according to Bailey, but six great botanic 
gardens that combine the features of a scientific institution for research 
and education with those of a public park: Kew Gardens, the Jardin 
des Plantes, the Berlin Botanic Gardens, the Botanic Garden of the 
Imperial University at Tokyo, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and 
the New York Botanical Gardens. Mr. Koch came to Garfield Park 
Conservatory with the determination to build up an institution that 
could stand comparison with the world’s greatest botanic collections. 
That he has already accomplished. There is no larger nor more 
interesting collection of exotic plants under glass in the United States 
than the one housed in this Conservatory. What he has accomplished, 
Mr. Koch has accomplished against the handicaps of climate and of 
the vandalism that seems to be inseparable from a public park. His 
success has been due in no small part to the intimate knowledge of 
rare plants and plant markets that he acquired while at the Missouri 
Botanical Gardens, as well as to the acquaintances and friends that he 
made among collectors and scientists of the world while there. 
In the beginning Garfield Park Conservatory was stocked with 
the plants that had been housed in the three smaller conservatories 
that it replaced. There were, of necessity, many duplicate specimens. 
Mr. Koch at once began to exchange these duplicate specimens for 
rarer ones. He also began propagating new and rare species from 
spores, seeds, root cuttings, and the like. Some of the most magnifi- 
cent specimens in the present collection were grown from a handful of 
mixed seed that a returned missionary from Africa gave him. Among 
these are two handsome calatheas that are, so far as is known, still 
unnamed. Two large specimens of one of these calatheas flank the 
lagoon in the Fern House, and are among the most admired foliage 
