Home » More About BBG » Annual Report » 2005
Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2005 Annual Report
Continuing Education
The Garden's Continuing Education Department offered 154 classes and day trips this year, reaching 2,185 participants. New classes included the hugely popular "fast track" option in the Certificate in Floral Design program, which lets students complete the basic and intermediate core courses in eight days instead of ten weeks. Other new offerings included classes that tied in with special events, such as mini-seminars on fall-themed topics at the Continuing Education Open House at the Harvest Fair. The Certificate in Horticulture program marked its tenth anniversary in June, and the Garden invited current and past graduates and instructors to attend the first-ever graduation ceremony, followed by a festive reception. As part of the Garden's new visual identity, BBG's course catalog has an updated look and a new name: With publication of the May–August 2005 edition, Get Green! has been called Classes & Events.
Several exciting and informative tours were conducted by BBG Director Emeritus Elizabeth Scholtz through our Botanical Adventures program. These included a tour of eastern Australia, a tour of Japan, and a tour of the palaces, castles, and gardens of Great Britain.
Continuing Education staff provided support and training for interns and intern coordinators throughout the Garden, with the goal of improving the educational value of internships. This year, there were 15 education and 9 horticulture internships. The department also organized nine staff seminars in the winter months, so that Garden staff could share botanical passions and horticultural travel experiences, and meet public-garden staff from around the world.
BBG continued its annual Garden Guide Training program, which prepares volunteers to lead formal tours and programs. In this, its 31st year, the program produced 16 new Weekday Garden Guides and 17 new Weekend Garden Guides, bringing the total number of trained guides to 140. BBG also aims to create a more educational and interactive experience for casual Garden visitors during the summer through its Guides in the Garden program. Now in its fourth year, the program trains guides to interpret the Garden with individual visitors, small groups, and camp groups.
Led by Julie Warsowe, director of Continuing Education, staff representatives from throughout the Garden continued work on a formal, institution-wide Interpretive Master Plan dedicated to conveying the vital conservation message "Plants are essential to life." The goal of the plan is to create a new interpretive scheme that will communicate BBG's plant-conservation message and encourage visitors to see their trip as a starting point for a lifetime of learning about plants, gardening, and the environment. In fall 2004, the Garden received a three-year, $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund the development of the interpretation scheme, the creation and testing of a variety of interpretive tools to be used on-site at BBG, and staff development.