Started in 1990, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden began a rather ambitious project to document the flora in all counties within a 50-mile radius of New York City, including all of Long Island, southeastern New York State, and northern New Jersey. Much of the funding for the project comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the New York Community Trust. As part of the public outreach component of this project, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has created the online metropolitan plant encyclopedia, along with a botanical key to identifying these plants. Visitors can browse through the encyclopedia at their leisure, consult a glossary of terms, and learn more about each species. Additionally, the "What Plants Grow Where" will help users learn which woody plant species grow in any given county within the study area.