III. Improvements which would constitute new departures (the introduction of distinctly new features), so far as not dependent on the questions considered under the two remaining heads. [Pages 17-24].
IV. Questions of automobile through-traffic or park traffic and of park uses distinct from and more or less conflicting with Botanical Garden uses as such; of possible restrictions on the right of the public to enter upon all parts of the grounds at all times of day and night; and of related matters. [Pages 25-31].
V. The vicinity of the Museum and various other questions dependent upon that and upon the questions discussed under heading IV. [Pages 32-39].
PART I
MAINTENANCE OF GROUNDS
The basic need in the improvement of the grounds, without meeting which other improvements will be nugatory, wasteful and transitory in effect, is that of greatly increasing the quantity and quality of maintenance—involving a correspondingly large increase in the annual expenditure for maintenance.
This matter is so fundamental and the manner in which the possibilities of annual maintenance control all other decisions is so direct and so far-reaching, that it seems necessary to discuss it at some length and attempt to gauge, at least in a general way, the cost of adequate and economical maintenance.
Maintenance may be made in any given case so costly as to be uneconomical; but it should be noted at the start that inadequate maintenance is always uneconomical in that it involves progressive depreciation of the capital investment. In the case of a botanical garden or a park, where the real values derived from the investment are largely dependent on the cumulative effect of the growth of plants in certain ways over long periods of years, the effect of inadequate or ill-directed maintenance is peculiarly disastrous because the resulting depreciation (or failure to secure legitimate increase of value) can never be offset in short order by liberal investment in repairs and improvements, as can generally be done with buildings and engineering works. There is absolutely no other road to first-rate results than by the process of slow natural growth under the selective control, protection and guidance of suitable methods of maintenance year after year.
The kind, amount and cost of maintenance of grounds necessary to keep on the safe side of the border which separates cumulative advance in values from progressive deterioration depend mainly on three sets of factors. One obviously is the efficiency and cost of labor and the skill with which it is directed. A second includes the inherent advantages and disadvantages of the site and of external or otherwise largely uncontrollable conditions—such factors as soil, climate, atmospheric impurities, and the habits of the people who resort to the grounds. But normally it is the third set which accounts for the greatest variations in the cost of adequate maintenance. These are the variations in what might be called types of landscape treatment, such as:
(a) Established native woodlands, where there is an approach toward the self-maintaining equilibrium of a mature natural forest.
(b) Areas in which mixed ground-covers of herbaceous or woody plants, or both, while never quite attaining a permanent natural equilibrium, such as characterizes many forest floors and many marshes, can be kept in satisfactory condition by wholesale methods, as, for example, by infrequent scything and a limited amount of hand weeding.