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Introduction to the Native Landscape Reader

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Introduction to the Native Landscape Reader Introduction Growing concerns about the depletion of scientific study, as a model for design, and resources and global climate change have as the focus of preservation (or restoration) propelled many people, from landscape ar- efforts in the man-made landscape. Aes- chitects to professional stewards to home thetically, philosophically, practically, and gardeners, to reexamine how we design politically, the native landscape served as and manage the land. From backyards to inspiration and guide, as a source of plants national parks, many have clamored for and as instructor on how to plant, and as more “naturalness,” a reconnection with something to treat with wonder and awe. our environment, which could guide us In addition, our relationship to the land- in both the aesthetic and the ecological scape generated much thought, as writers, realms. Although some people believe that designers, and others noted the calming longing for naturalness is relatively new, influence of nature, gardens, and parks perhaps originally spurred by Earth Day on the human spirit and fought to provide in 1970, there is in fact a rich history of such places as refuges within and around thought about the native landscape and developing cities and towns. Increas- the design and management of American ingly the native landscape was seen as a gardens, parks, and national preserves. resource requiring ongoing management That history is revealed in the writings col- and care—or active stewardship, in today’s lected in this volume. terms. During this period some of the ear- Through the nineteenth and early liest efforts in ecological remediation were twentieth centuries—roughly the same begun, as individuals sought to restore period that the profession of landscape integrity to damaged ecosystems, to man- architecture and many American conser- age roadsides, forestry tracts, and parks, vation movements were in their forma- and to create arboreta and botanic gardens tive stages—the native landscape was the as reserves of native flora and fauna. subject of intense interest, as a focus for The Native Landscape Reader is a col- 3 NLR final_.indd 3 9/20/11 3:45 PM lection of writings from the 1830s through stricted to native plant species.1 Pollan was the 1930s which address these various responding to the current “natural garden” themes. The choice of dates is somewhat movement that, as many of the writers in subjective, but during this period garden this volume did, celebrates the value of na- and design publications paid ever greater tive flora over imported species, particularly attention to the native landscape. Literary those non-native species such as Japanese interest in the native landscape began to honeysuckle, kudzu, purple loosestrife, and decline by the late 1930s (only to pick up tree-of-heaven that have threatened the again after Earth Day and surge in recent integrity of wild ecosystems. Those non- years). Many of the articles were published native plants and animals causing ecologi- in relatively obscure places, professional cal harm are frequently labeled “aliens,” journals or reports; others appeared in “invaders,” even “monsters,” and the use of widely read popular magazines. Together, such fear-laden terminology evokes uncom- they provide a rich record of the collective fortable parallels with xenophobic attitudes thinking about America’s native landscape in our society at large, particularly directed heritage and the celebration of that heri- toward human immigrants.2 In her article tage in parks and gardens. Designers varied “The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on in their adherence to native flora and local the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions,” the ecological conditions: some were strict, but historian Banu Subramaniam has suggested many were quite eclectic in their choice of that much of the battle rhetoric about alien plants, occasionally using plants that hor- plants and animals “misplaces and displaces ticulturists have considered to be weeds. anxieties about economic, social, political, They all, however, advocated for greater and cultural changes onto outsiders and attention to the rich beauty of our native foreigners.”3 flora and its “fitness.” Their writings also The landscape historians Gert Gröning provide a base from which we can continue and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn have to explore ways of designing and manag- shown how native plant advocates in Ger- ing landscapes that help preserve biotic many developed strong ties to that coun- diversity in the face of climate change, try’s National Socialism and Nazi ideology continued habitat loss, and other forms of and politics from the late 1930s through degradation. And I believe that they can the 1940s.4 They document how the con- give us hopefulness and optimism, as we cept of the “nature garden” in Europe and recognize that people have been struggling specifically in Germany was developed with issues of conservation and restoration through the work of the Irish garden writer for at least 180 years. William Robinson and the German garden architect Willy Lange. The nature garden concept as promoted by Lange fostered an The use of so-called native plants in both emphasis on the exclusive use of native practice and rhetoric has at times gener- plants as part of the Nationalistic fer- ated controversy. In a 1994 article in the vor that swept Germany during the Nazi New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan era. They note that the “Reich Landscape raised questions about garden styles re- Law,” promoted by the landscape architect 4 THE NATIVE LANDSCApe reADer NLR final_.indd 4 9/20/11 3:45 PM Alwin Seifert, would have purged foreign in everybody coming to America. I do plant species during the Hitler regime, in not believe in any restriction of the yel- concert with its social policies.5 low races or black races or any other Wolschke-Bulmahn also points to arti- races. I am willing to take my place in cles by the Danish American landscape this country with the rest of the world, architect Jens Jensen published in the Ger- and if I am to be defeated then I will man magazine Gartenkunst as evidence of go down in defeat after I have tried “his close connections to Nazi landscape heroically to hold my own. I think it is architects.”6 Jensen was indeed one of the absolutely wrong to make restrictions most fervent advocates of native gardens against anyone. Either you must in the late nineteenth and early twentieth be so selfish that you bring in yourself centuries, and Wolschke-Bulmahn sug- only, or you must admit everybody, and gests that his writings “confirm racism as I am for everybody.9 an underlying motive for his plea for the exclusive use of native plants.”7 But a con- While Jensen admired the growing vincing rebuttal has been made by Dave interest in native gardens in Germany, Egan and William Tishler, who point to he was suspicious of the Hitler regime’s Jensen’s support of immigration as contrib- political agenda. In a letter to his colleague uting to the American national character, Frank Waugh, he noted that he’d been his disgust with the Hitler regime, and his invited to speak at the Twelfth Interna- belief that native plants were valuable as tional Horticultural Congress in Berlin but key contributors to a sense of place and to hesitated to participate because of Hitler’s ecological integrity.8 recent attack on Austria.10 In the end, Jen- Much as we do today, Jensen and many sen did send a paper, but it was read by of the authors in this volume lived during a Franz Aust, a professor of landscape archi- period of increasing immigration pressures tecture from the University of Wisconsin.11 and backlash in the United States. Poli- In a 1945 letter to the landscape architect cies of exclusion were put in place, lead- Genevieve Gillette, Jensen remarked that ing to the National Origins Act of 1924, Hitler had brainwashed the minds of 80 which favored immigrants from western million Germans.12 Europe, limited numbers from southern Egan and Tishler demonstrate that and eastern Europe, and virtually excluded Jensen’s advocacy of the use of native immigrants from Asia. Danish-born him- plants was based not on exclusionary ide- self, Jensen deeply valued the diversity ology but rather on his empirical obser- that immigrants brought to the United vations of what grew best in the areas States, a belief he expressed in a talk he where he worked and on his deepening gave to a meeting of the Women’s Interna- appreciation of the beauty and fitness tional League for Peace organized by Jane of these plants to the midwestern land- Addams in Chicago in 1924. scape. As he recalled in his essay “Natu- ral Parks and Gardens” (1930): “There Now I will say one word about immi- were two reasons why I turned away from gration, and that is this: That I believe the formal design that employed foreign INTRODUCTION 5 NLR final_.indd 5 9/20/11 3:45 PM Wetland, Pinckney State Recreation Area, Livingston County, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.) 6 THE NATIVE LANDSCApe reADer NLR final_.indd 6 9/20/11 3:45 PM plants. The first reason was an increas- Defining what constitutes a native plant is ing dissatisfaction with both the plants part of the challenge of working with na- and the unyielding design—I suppose tive flora. Although no single definition is dissatisfaction with things as they are is accepted by botanists across the board, the always the fundamental cause of revolt— presence of two features is crucial. The and the second was that I was becoming plant must occur naturally without human more and more appreciative of the beauty intervention and must occur naturally in a and decorative quality of the native flora specific area or region.
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