Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Purpose: Supporting Lifelong Learning In their dual role as living museums and repositories of rare and endangered plants, botanic gardens such as Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) have a responsibility to educate the public about conserving these vital, vanishing resources. To expand its role in this regard, BBG will use this three-year grant in support of its program BBG-Where Plants Come to Life: Interpreting the Garden for the 21st Century. The goal of this program is to give BBG the institutional capacity to provide visitors with a better understanding of the vital role plants play in their lives, with the long-term hope that they will become better stewards of the environment. The project will accomplish this by developing a formal, institutionwide interpretation program dedicated to conveying the vital conservation message "Plants are essential to life." The primary targets for this important message are the nearly 700,000 visitors to the garden. Specifically, the grant will fund (1) the development of the garden's first interpretive master plan; (2) the creation and testing of a variety of interpretive devices to be used onsite at BBG; and (3) staff development in interpretation.