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-

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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

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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

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NLR final_.indd 5 9/20/11 3:45 PM Wetland, Pinckney State Recreation Area, Livingston County, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

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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. The existence of a of this country.”13 In truth, he was not a plant prior to the period of European set- purist. He clearly recognized that many tlement (to the best of expert knowledge) non-natives—such as lilacs, hollyhocks, is often considered the defining feature of roses, and peonies—had long-held asso- a native plant for a particular region.17 This ciations in people’s lives. He would regu- definition clearly disallows those plants larly include them in his client’s gardens that have naturalized since European set- near the house or in special formal plant- tlement (i.e., taken to their new home and ing areas.14 Near his own family’s cabin at spread as they did in their old), whether The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, moved from one region of North America Jensen planted hollyhock seeds that were to another (such as from the Southeast to a gift to him and his wife from a friend. the Midwest) or imported from abroad.18 Of these plants, he noted: Advocates of their use frequently argue that native species are better adapted Hollyhocks, although not a true prod- to local ecological conditions than non- uct of native soil, has truly become a natives. Stephen Jay Gould, however, has part of our rural countryside as the im- disputed the biological argument for the migrant, for the pioneer so loved the fitness or superiority of native species, hollyhock that he brought it with him suggesting instead that “‘natives’ are only and planted it at his cabin and dugout the plants that happened to arrive first door. Traveling through out our western and [were] able to flourish.” Nevertheless, plains, a clump of hollyhocks, or a lilac he acknowledges the potential threat of bush and a few apple trees, are all that introduced species to preserving native remains to tell of the struggle of some biodiversity: early settler, who later, for some reason or another, had to give up the struggle I do understand the appeal of the ethi- and move onward.15 cal argument that we should leave na- ture alone and preserve as much as we Jensen was, however, aware of the poten- can of what existed and developed be- tial invasive qualities of non-native plants, fore our very recent geological appear- noting how he had once planted oriental ance. . . . I would certainly be horrified bittersweet before he realized it would be- to watch the botanical equivalent of come a problem.16 McDonalds’ uniform architecture and cuisine wiping out every local diner in America. Cherishing native plants does

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NLR final_.indd 7 9/20/11 3:45 PM allow us to defend and preserve a maxi- ecologist John Randall note in their book mal amount of local variety.19 Invasive Plants: Weeds of the Global Garden (1996) that roughly half of the three hun- Fortunately, the number of non-native dred plants known to be invasive in North plants that become invasive is relatively America were imported for their horticul- small compared with the number actually tural use.22 We continue to learn about the grown horticulturally.20 dynamics of these invasive plant species In his review of the debates over the and the challenges of controlling them. use of native vs. non-native plants, the biol- In his article “Invasive Species as Eco- ogist Daniel Simberloff has noted the chal- logical Threat: Is Restoration an Alterna- lenges of supporting a preference for native tive to Fear-based Resource Management?” vegetation on aesthetic grounds, as many the social scientist Paul Gobster suggests writers, including those represented in The that the “fear” and “threat” factors so often Native Landscape Reader, have done. He emphasized in discussions of invasive spe- concludes that “the strongest ethical bases, cies may, in fact, have negative repercus- and possibly the only ethical bases, for sions, alienating the public and losing vital concern about introduced species are that support for important conservation aims. they can threaten the existence of native Gobster suggests changing the terms of species and communities and that they the discussion to focus on the positives can cause staggering damage, reflected in associated with conservation efforts: the economic terms, to human endeavors.”21 “health” and “diversity” of landscapes, The garden writer Janet Marinelli and the their “heritage” and “authenticity,” their

Savanna near Dexter, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

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NLR final_.indd 8 9/20/11 3:45 PM “sustainability,” their value for people’s “use more comprehensive use of the term in the and enjoyment,” their value in providing a title allows for the inclusion of a broader “sense of place,” and their value as places cross section of writings about American that nurture “stewardship” and involve- nature, conservation, and design. ment.23 These notions apply across the Today, the interest in native landscapes conservation continuum, from backyards and conservation is as great as or perhaps planted in native species to large-scale eco- greater than during the period covered logical restoration efforts. by The Native Landscape Reader. Clearly, The term “native landscape” as used in our need for conservation has not dimin- the title of this volume refers both to the ished—rather, it has become more press- wilder nature that became the focus of ing. Leading threats to biodiversity include conservation activities and to parks and our burgeoning human population, habitat gardens designed in a naturalistic style, destruction and fragmentation, introduc- particularly those emphasizing regionally tion of exotic invasive species, and the native plants and plant communities. pressures on natural systems exacerbated Some authors, such as Jensen and Frank by climate change and environmental dis- Waugh, typically restricted their use of the asters such as oil spills and wars. term to those lands where human influ- In addition, we are facing the loss of ence was minimized. They characterized traditional knowledge about local ecosys- designed places based on the native land- tems. As we have become a more high-tech scape as being done in the “natural style” society, we have become increasingly dis- or as “natural parks and gardens.”24 The connected from the natural world around

Wetland, Illinois Beach State Park, Zion, Ill. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

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NLR final_.indd 9 9/20/11 3:45 PM us. Few people can name more than a early nineteenth centuries began to appre- handful of the native species found in their ciate the vast beauty of the North Ameri- region. Children are described as suffering can continent, they also realized that it was “nature-deficit disorder.” Many advocates in danger of being irrevocably lost through for native gardens believe that bringing human activity. The “axe” became the sym- nature back into our lives through our bol of destruction, signaling the tension be- gardens can make a huge difference, not tween advancing civilization and pristine just through their ecological value but also wilderness.26 Nowhere was this tension ar- through teaching us the unique natural his- ticulated more profoundly than in Thomas tory of our region. National organizations Cole’s “Essay on American Scenery,” read such as the Wild Ones and the National before the National Academy of Design on Wildlife Federation (NWF) advocate for May 16, 1835, and included in Part I: wilder gardens through their educational and certification programs like the NWF’s The most distinctive, and perhaps the “Certified Wildlife Habitat” program. most impressive, characteristic of Amer- Native gardens help reduce energy ican scenery is its wildness. . . . It is the and water use, encourage infiltration of most distinctive, because in civilized stormwater runoff, provide habitat for Europe the primitive features of scenery regional wildlife, and encourage working have long since been destroyed or modi- with rather than against nature. As the fied. . . . And to this cultivated state our late Craig Tufts, a naturalist for the NWF, western world is fast approaching; but explained: “These new gardens are nur- nature is still predominant, and there tured by individuals who want to invite are those who regret that with the im- the natural world back into their lives; to provements of cultivation the sublimity see butterflies dance from flower to flower, of the wilderness should pass away: for frogs splash across a water garden, turtles those scenes of solitude from which the sunbathe on rocks and to hear the trill of hand of nature has never been lifted, af- songbirds fill the air. It’s a way to connect fect the mind with a more deep toned with the natural world. And while occa- emotion than aught which the hand of sionally an unwanted critter may venture man has touched. Amid them the con- in, the vast majority of wildlife species sequent associations are of God the cre- that are attracted to these refuges are wel- ator—they are his undefiled works, and comed.”25 Bringing nature home can help the mind is cast into the contemplation us build our environmental literacy about of eternal things. the natural world and strengthen our con- nections to broader conservation issues. Cole’s view, this sense of wonder but also of impending loss, was shared by many American naturalists, writers, and artists of his generation. In Wilderness and the An Emerging Sense of Loss American Mind (1967), the environmen- Just as American philosophers, painters, tal historian Roderick Nash describes how and writers in the later eighteenth and the flowering of Romanticism in Europe

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NLR final_.indd 10 9/20/11 3:45 PM fostered in the United States a new per- region and the headwaters of the Missis- spective on the American wilderness. The sippi River, and recording many Native sto- Romantic notion that wild places reflected ries and legends. Similarly, between 1838 God’s grandeur led to the embracing of and 1841 the American artist and author places that would previously have been George Catlin traveled through the terri- considered wastelands. Ralph Waldo Emer- tories west of the Mississippi River, paint- son took this idea a step further, suggest- ing and learning the customs of the Native ing that the landscape was, in fact, a holy tribes living there. He exhibited his col- text, contemplation of which could bring lection of portraits and artifacts in major one closer to God.27 American explorers, U.S. cities and later in European capitals poets, and painters inspired appreciation as well. These early descriptions of the of scenic wonders such as Niagara Falls, North American continent are filled with the Adirondacks, Catskills, and southern wonderment and awe. They make us pain- Appalachians in the East and, later, the fully aware of what has been lost. Yellowstone region, the Rockies, and the Many of the earliest writers on the Sierra Nevada in the West.28 “native landscape” felt compelled to debate Throughout the eighteenth and early whether American scenery (and art) could nineteenth centuries, the journals of trav- compete with Europe’s. Thomas Cole’s elers who had experienced firsthand the “Essay” might seem strange to today’s natural wonders of the North American reader familiar with the varied scenic won- continent provided glimpses of the wild ders of the North American continent. But beauty, open spaces, and diversity of the in the early nineteenth century, many citi- broad landscape. The naturalist William zens of the new republic felt culturally infe- Bartram, who traveled throughout the rior to Europe, and that feeling extended southeastern United States from 1773 to to their new country’s “savage” landscape. 1777, expounded at length on the beauty Cole became one of the champions of the and sublimity of the American wilder- beauty, magnificence, and sublimity of ness in his Travels, published in 1791.29 American scenery.31 European landscapes, The book quickly made him one of the he noted in his “Essay,” are invested with foremost authorities on America’s natural long-appreciated legends and stories, history.30 Other explorers included Meri- whereas “American associations are not so wether Lewis and William Clark, whose much of the past as of the present and the expedition of 1804–6 was commissioned future.” by Thomas Jefferson to explore the lands Cole is considered the founder of acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of the Hudson River school of painters, 1803. The American geographer and eth- which included his close friend Asher B. nologist Henry Schoolcraft learned the Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Ojibwe language from his wife, who was Francis Cropsey, John Frederick Ken- Ojibwe and Scotch-Irish, and traveled sett, Sanford Gibson Robinson, and oth- throughout much of the upper Midwest ers, whose work celebrated the region from 1822 to 1841, serving as an Indian of the Hudson River valley as well as agent, making maps of the Lake Superior the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the

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NLR final_.indd 11 9/20/11 3:45 PM White Mountains. The concerns of the “A Few Hints on Landscape Gardening,” Hudson River school artists intersected also from 1851 (Part III), Downing claims with those of the Knickerbockers, a group that approximately one-half of the trees of New York–based Romantic writers of planted ornamentally during the previous the period, which included William Cul- ten years were tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus len Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and altissima) from Central China and Tai- Washington Irving. Bryant became associ- wan and silver poplar (Populus alba) from ate editor of the New-York Evening Post Europe. “It is . . . one of the characteris- and used the daily to share etchings tics of the human mind,” he remarks, “to and writings extolling the virtues of the overlook that which is immediately about American landscape. Cooper’s novels The us, however admirable, and to attach the Pioneers (1823) and subsequent volumes greatest importance to whatever is rare, of his Leatherstocking Tales and The Last and difficult to be obtained.” Downing of the Mohicans (1826) illustrated that advises aspiring gardeners and designers “wilderness had value as a moral influ- to “study landscape in nature more, and ence, a source of beauty, and a place of the gardens and their catalogues less.” exciting adventure.”32 Irving’s Sketchbook, Similarly, the sculptor Horatio Gre- published in 1819–20, included the short enough criticized American architecture stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” for its imitation of classical European and “Rip Van Winkle” and infused the styles. In a series of essays, Greenough Catskill region of New York State with a noted that the “organic beauty” found in sense of magic and wonder. Through his nature provides an infinite source of inspi- writings, Irving endowed the American ration for artists and designers. Although landscape with the “stored and poetical not heeded at the time, Greenough’s association” many people felt was lack- essays were collected and republished in ing in comparison with Europe.33 Col- 1947 as Form and Function: Remarks on lectively, the books, poems, articles, and Art by Horatio Greenough and have been exhibitions by these writers and artists read by artists, architects, and design- helped to establish firmly an American ers ever since. His ideas on the relation tradition of literature and art. of form to function were later celebrated The Hudson River region was also in the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank home to Andrew Jackson Downing, the Lloyd Wright.35 most influential early American land- scape designer.34 In his 1851 article “The Neglected American Plants” (Part II), Nature as Pleasure Ground Downing further challenged the view that American scenery and flora were defi- From the mid-nineteenth century on, cient, noting the popularity of American Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux plants among the gardeners of Europe and advocated tirelessly for the salubrious value pointing to the “apathy and indifference of naturalistic scenery to the city dweller. of Americans to the beautiful sylvan and Their work in New York’s Central Park and floral products of their own country.” In Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the residential

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NLR final_.indd 12 9/20/11 3:45 PM Wetland flora detail, Waterloo State Recreation Area, Washtenaw County, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

suburb of Riverside outside Chicago, and view, such places would have a powerful Chicago’s South Park helped to establish restorative influence on park users.37 Their a tradition of naturalistic design that was landscapes transformed nature into pleas- promoted by many of the practitioners and ure ground. authors in this volume. In creating these landscapes, Olmsted Wherever possible, Olmsted and Vaux and Vaux pulled from both native and worked with the existing conditions to exotic plant palettes. For example, in Olm- enframe views of beautiful scenery, orches- sted’s design for the lagoon at the World’s trate sequences of meadows and woodlands, Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he gave and provide dramatic and serene bodies of primacy to the flora of Illinois wetlands but water. Their carefully designed urban parks, also enriched the palette with plants from where existing conditions were sometimes other regions. He did emphasize, however, unfavorable, often required more deliber- that they should blend into the overall ate engineering. These landscapes included landscape composition.38 When Olmsted masses of trees and shrubs, ponds and used exotics in his planting designs, he streams, and ever-changing patterns of light avoided the gardenesque style, with its and shade, intended to provide people liv- plant novelties and showy flower beds or ing in the crowded, chaotic city an oasis of the museumlike display of botanical col- calm and coherence for passive recreation lections with widely spaced specimens, and enjoyment—in essence a piece of the which had become immensely popular country in the city.36 In Olmsted and Vaux’s in the United States by midcentury.39 As

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NLR final_.indd 13 9/20/11 3:45 PM Olmsted noted in his report for Boston’s ous projects in the Chicago area, includ- Franklin Park in 1886, ing Highland Park (in collaboration with William M. R. French), which artfully The urban elegance generally desired preserved many of the scenic ravines along in a small public or private pleasure Lake Michigan, and work on Graceland ground is to be methodically guarded Cemetery; and designs for park systems against. Turf, for example, is to be in in Omaha and Minneapolis.41 Cleveland most parts preferred as kept short by advocated an integrated approach to land- sheep, rather than lawn mowers; well scape design and planning through a series known and long tried trees and bushes of brochures and reports. He suggested to rare ones; natives to exotics; humble that the western United States offered field flowers to high bred marvels; plain new opportunities for urban design which green leaves to the blotched, spotted could integrate sensitivity to the natural and fretted leaves for which, in decora- topography, vegetation, and water features tive gardening, there is now a passing and provide for the social needs of people. fashion.40 Rather than singular large parks in a town or city, he promoted the idea of a continu- Horace William Shaler Cleveland, a ous “green ribbon” of parks and boulevards contemporary of Olmsted’s, developed his running through and linking communi- ideas of naturalistic design in his work with ties.42 Notable among his expressions of Robert Morris Copeland at Sleepy Hollow this philosophy are his Landscape Archi- Cemetery in Boston in the mid-1850s; vari- tecture as Applied to the Wants of the West

Beaver dam, Oakland County, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

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NLR final_.indd 14 9/20/11 3:45 PM (1873), Culture and Management of Our A Longing for Native Forests for Development as Timber or Grounding in Place Ornamental Wood (1882; reprinted in this volume), and “Suggestions for a System of The idea of the “wild” garden was im- Parks and Parkways for the City of Min- mensely popular in the literature of the late neapolis” (1884). 1800s and early 1900s. Magazines such By the late nineteenth century, a broader as Country Life in America, The Crafts- dialogue was emerging in landscape gar- man, The Garden, House Beautiful, House dening, forestry, and conservation which and Garden, and Ladies’ Home Journal emphasized greater appreciation of Amer- routinely carried essays about gardening, ica’s native flora and scenery and their particularly on wildflowers, wildflower gar- value in recreation. The botanist Charles dens, and conservation efforts. The garden Sprague Sargent, director of Harvard’s historian Virginia Tuttle Clayton has noted Arnold Arboretum from 1873 to 1927, cre- that the plethora of articles about wild gar- ated a prominent platform for discussion dens during this period coincided with a of these topics in the journal Garden and growing concern about the disappearance Forest, which he established in 1888. For of native vegetation that people remem- nine years, Garden and Forest provided bered from their youth. Many people saw a forum for exploring the relationship wild gardening as a way of participating in between nature and art and for celebrat- conservation, protecting the native species ing American flora and scenery, advocat- that were being lost, and, ultimately, pre- ing for their protection and arguing their serving a defining force in the American value to the general health of the Ameri- national character.44 Increasingly, a call can public. Sargent and William Stiles, an was sounded for a new style of landscape editorial writer for the New York Tribune, design, one that was truly “American” and were able to attract many of the leading grounded in place, to countermand the thinkers in the nascent field of landscape dominance of Italianate gardens so popu- architecture as well as in horticulture and lar at the time. forestry to write for the journal. Contribu- Nowhere was the call more fervent tors included Frederick Law Olmsted, than in the pages of Gustav Stickley’s Mrs. Schuyler (Mariana Griswold) Van magazine The Craftsman. For instance, in Rensselaer, Liberty Hyde Bailey, and the 1906 one contributor, Charles Barnard, in young Charles Eliot, whose essays in Gar- an article titled “The Commercial Value of den and Forest were pivotal in the devel- the Wild,” noted that books about return- opment of the Metropolitan Reservations ing to nature were “on the shelves of every around Boston.43 A number of articles from bookstore.” Suggesting a “back to the land” the pages of Garden and Forest are brought sensibility, Barnard advocated for a rustic together in this volume, including several approach to building a country home, one written by Sargent (or, more likely, by Sar- with a minimal impact on wild nature. gent and Stiles together). Too fast, too unwisely we have cut down the trees, plowed up the wild flowers

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NLR final_.indd 15 9/20/11 3:45 PM and driven away the wild things of the ous designs for Chicago’s Graceland Cem- woods and fields. We have destroyed a etery by William Saunders, Swain Nelson, native garden of surpassing variety and H. W. S. Cleveland, and William Le Baron beauty to make a formal exhibition of Jenney. Simonds initially began this work foolish double monstrosities and mere as an employee of Jenney’s design office, overgrown wonder flowers. It is not yet shortly after joining the firm in 1878. Over too late to save our lovely wild places— the following years, he reshaped the land- not too late to transform our remnants scape of Graceland as superintendent and of the wilderness into reservations and then as consultant, transforming it into homes that shall be of surpassing beauty, one of the most celebrated “rural cemeter- because sweet, wild, natural and free ies” in the country. from the conventional improvements of From Graceland, Simonds went on to the landscape gardener.45 design parks and park systems in many towns throughout the Midwest, numerous The interest in native flora in landscape country estates, college campuses, and at design, in ecology, and in conservation was least two arboreta—Nichols Arboretum particularly strong in Chicago at the turn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Morton of the century; two of the region’s most Arboretum in Chicago. Although he did noted practitioners, Ossian Cole (O. C.) accept many introduced plant species, in Simonds and Jens Jensen, were deeply his designs he emphasized common plants involved with these ideas. Wilhelm Miller, of the region that often were considered who had worked at Cornell’s Agricultural weeds—hawthorn (especially Crataegus Experiment Station as a writer and edito- crus-galli and C. mollis), wild crabapple rial assistant under Liberty Hyde Bailey, (Malus ioensis), sumac (Rhus glabra and the prolific professor of horticulture, bot- R. typhina), hazelnut (Corylus americana), any, and agricultural science at Cornell, elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), Indian and served as an editor for Country Life in currant (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus), asters America, became fascinated with the work and goldenrods (Aster spp. and Solidago of Jenson, Simonds, and their colleague spp.), and others. In his book Landscape Walter Burley Griffin, which he perceived Gardening, originally published in 1920, as a new regional style. In his role as exten- Simonds suggested that one of the goals sion landscape architect at the University of landscape design ought to be to “teach of Illinois, Miller wrote the circular The [people] to see the beauty of nature” and Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening “to take pride in their surroundings.”46 He (1915) as well as several magazine articles also saw a link between design and conser- (one of which is included in Part III), in vation: Landscape design “will teach [the which he described this “prairie style,” city-dweller] to respect the wooded bluffs based on flora and landscape forms com- and hillsides, the springs, the streams, mon in the Midwest. river banks and lake shores within the city Simonds was the senior practitioner of boundaries and preserve them with loving the three and had built his early reputation care.”47 In “Nature as the Great Teacher in on the enlargement and reworking of previ- Landscape Gardening,” which originated

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NLR final_.indd 16 9/20/11 3:45 PM as a lecture at the University of Illinois in plant distributions around the Great Lakes 1922 (included in Part III), Simonds urged and published one of his earliest papers landscape architecture students to study on the topic.49 As a member of Chicago’s nature as a model for design. Special Park Commission, organized in Jens Jensen’s career had many parallels 1899, Jensen headed the inventory of the to Simonds’s. His first major design was the physiography and vegetation of the region American Garden in Chicago’s Union Park, which resulted in a proposal to create a for which he collected native wildflowers large band of preserves, many of which from the surrounding countryside, hoping were ultimately protected as part of the to remind urban dwellers of the natural Forest Preserve system developed for Cook heritage of their region. Jensen continued and surrounding counties.50 Jensen’s report throughout his career to experiment with from that study is included in Part VI. native plants in horticultural gardens, and his work increasingly involved what today we call ecological restoration. In fact, Jen- The Progressive Era—Country sen’s last public project, Lincoln Memorial Life and Country Place Gardens in Springfield, Illinois, begun in 1936, can be counted as one of the earli- The era of social activism and reform est experiments in ecological restoration, which spanned the 1890s through the comparable to Edith Roberts’s work at 1920s also left an indelible mark on the the Vassar College Out-of-Door Botanical American landscape. Providing fresh air Laboratory that began in the early 1920s and outdoor activities for children and for and the groundbreaking work by professors all social classes was considered impera- Aldo Leopold, John Curtis, G. William tive.51 The work of reformers such as Jacob Longenecker, and others at the University Riis, whose influential photographic ex- of Wisconsin Arboretum (founded in 1934 posé How the Other Half Lives (1890) de- and described in the article by Paul Riis in picted the brutal living conditions of New Part V). York City’s tenements, brought attention to Jensen learned a great deal about native the need for playgrounds and parks in New plants of the Chicago region from the noted York’s slum neighborhoods. Reformers in botanist/ecologist Henry Chandler Cowles other cities soon took up the cause. Chica- (1869–1939) of the University of Chicago, go’s Special Park Commission documented who pioneered many of the concepts of the need for small neighborhood parks and ecological succession through his study playgrounds throughout the city’s densely of the flora of the dunes of Lake Michi- populated areas, and individual districts gan, which he initially published in 1899.48 quickly responded.52 In addition to these With Cowles and others, Jensen explored inner city movements, concern arose about the prairies, wooded ravines, and wetlands the welfare of people living in rural ar- of the Chicago area and studied ecological eas—their access to modern-day improve- and spatial patterns which came to inform ments in health and sanitation as well as to his landscape designs. Like Cowles, Jen- education. Underlying all these reform ef- sen was fascinated by the biogeography of forts was the idea of the importance of na-

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NLR final_.indd 17 9/20/11 3:45 PM ture in the daily lives of citizens, whether of a patch of goldenrod illuminated by the in urban tenements, “country places” in the sun’s afterglow to an operatic performance. suburbs, or on rural farmsteads. In an article on Chicago’s Columbus Park, Jensen was interested in the role his he describes the composition of sunset “natural parks and gardens,” as he liked to views, brilliant fall colors, and appearances call them, would have on their visitors. He of birds as evoking Schubert’s Unfinished believed, as Olmsted did, in the calming Symphony. Years later, he recalled walk- influence of nature, particularly on people ing with Henry and Clara Ford along the who led stressful lives.53 Today, environ- Great Meadow he had designed at Fair mental psychologists have aptly noted the Lane, their estate in Dearborn. The linear restorative value of natural scenery and the space was oriented to the setting sun on outdoors to human health and well-being.54 the summer solstice, and Jensen remem- Much like Simonds, Jensen was also bered Henry’s remark about the beauty motivated by conservation values; he of the sunset which few took time to see wanted his designs to cultivate a greater despite its costing nothing.58 appreciation of nature and sense of respon- Jensen created formal settings for out- sibility for its stewardship.55 To this end, door performances as well, including coun- Jensen helped found two environmental cil rings, circular stone seats on which organizations—the Prairie Club and the groups could gather for poetry readings, Friends of Our Native Landscape. The discussions, and celebrations, and outdoor Prairie Club was organized as an out- theaters, or Player’s Greens.59 Raised in the growth of the Chicago Playground Asso- tradition of Danish folk schools with their ciation’s successful “Saturday Afternoon strong immersion in outdoor celebrations, Walking Trips,” which routinely offered Jensen believed that participation in such city residents the opportunity to explore outdoor activities, even as spectator, would the wilds around Chicago with Jensen foster an emotional attachment to nature. and other nature enthusiasts that included Liberty Hyde Bailey, one of the seminal Henry Cowles, William M. R. French, figures in American horticulture, plant sci- Walter Burley Griffin, Dwight Perkins, the ence, landscape gardening, and conserva- prairie school architect and crusader for tion in the twentieth century is represented the Cook County Forest Preserve system, in The Native Reader by a chapter from his the sculptor Lorado Taft, and others.56 The book The Outlook to Nature (1905). Born Friends of Our Native Landscape was a in South Haven, Michigan, in 1858, Bailey politically active group whose goal was to studied under the botanist William J. Beal at conserve areas of important scenic, natu- Michigan Agricultural College (now Michi- ral, or cultural value across the region.57 gan State University) and with Asa Gray at A desire to foster socially shared appre- Harvard University. He then returned to ciation of nature also informed Jensen’s Michigan Agricultural College, where he park and garden designs, in which he often organized the country’s first department provided settings for a variety of outdoor of horticulture and landscape gardening performances—including nature’s. In his in 1885. A short three years later, in 1888, book Siftings, Jensen compared the scene he moved to Cornell University, where he

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NLR final_.indd 18 9/20/11 3:45 PM spent the rest of his career in research, from his early childhood, Bailey wrote teaching, and public service and in orga- the first four leaflets himself, touting the nizing the Cornell Plantations, a botanical value of nature study for many fields and laboratory and arboretum for the campus. as the basis for fostering responsible land In 1908, Bailey was appointed by Theodore stewardship.61 Bailey’s own philosophy of Roosevelt to head the president’s Commis- nature was recorded in part in The Out- sion on Country Life, whose research and look to Nature. Later he would expound report provided a foundation for agricultural further on his ideas about our ethical and extension and social improvement in rural religious responsibilities to nature in The areas across the United States and drew on Holy Earth, published in 1918 and widely the work of other authors here, especially regarded as one of the seminal books in Frank Waugh’s in rural conservation and American conservation. planning.60 From 1896 to 1904, Bailey promoted the Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets, appeal- Applications of ing to the teachers of New York to incor- Modern Ecology porate nature study into their curriculums. He summarized the effort in his book The During the first decades of the twentieth Nature-Study Idea: Being an Interpreta- century, practitioners and conservationists tion of the New School-Movement to Put began to inform their work with the emerg- the Child in Sympathy with Nature, pub- ing ideas of ecology. Frank A. Waugh was lished in 1903. An eager student of nature a key early advocate for applying ecologi-

Yellow lady’s slipper, Skegemog Marsh, Torch Lake, Antrim County, Mich. (Photograph by Robert E. Grese.)

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NLR final_.indd 19 9/20/11 3:45 PM cal principles in landscape design. Born design in a series of articles under the in Wisconsin, Waugh studied horticulture general title “Plant Ecology,” published in at Kansas State University and taught at House Beautiful between 1927 and 1928. Oklahoma State, then moved east to the They noted the ecologically and aestheti- University of Vermont and finally to Mas- cally distinctive character of different sachusetts Agricultural College, where he plant associations, such as the oak woods, served as chair of the landscape architec- an open field, or a juniper hillside, and sug- ture program for some thirty years. A close gested that each of the major plant asso- friend of Jens Jensen (he was one of few ciations of the northeastern United States academics Jensen truly admired), Waugh, could be used as a theme for an ecologically like O. C. Simonds, urged students to based garden. In the first piece, they urged study the natural landscape as a source readers to look around them to discover of inspiration and, in 1917, he published “the intimate scenes of your own environ- The Natural Style of Landscape Garden- ment, for it is these that you can preserve ing. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, and re-create for yourself.”62 Roberts had Waugh conducted field studies in natural studied under Henry Cowles at the Uni- landscape aesthetics and ecology with his versity of Chicago, where she earned her students. Articles based on these were pub- PhD, and then taught at Vassar College lished in Landscape Architecture, including in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a professor “Ecology of the Roadside” (January 1931), of botany. In 1920, she began converting “Natural Plant Groups” (April 1931), “The what was described as a “four acre plot of Physiology of Lakes and Ponds” (January poison ivy” to an outdoor ecological labora- 1932), and “Running Water” (July 1932). “A tory.63 With her colleague Margaret Shaw, Juniper Landscape” (November 1931) and Roberts surveyed the flora of Dutchess “Pine Woods” (February 1932) were pub- County, gathering the information that lished in American Landscape Architect. provided the basis for their publication (He intended to collect these studies in a Native Plants of Dutchess County. “Knowl- book which he tentatively titled “Guide to edge,” they noted in their foreword, would the Landscape: A Textbook for Motorists, lead to “conservation,” and conservation Boy Scouts, and All Lovers of the Native meant “greater utilization through wiser Landscape, Especially for Painters and utilization.” Landscape Architects,” though he never Roberts’s association with Elsa Reh- did publish the volume.) Waugh also did mann led to a course on landscape garden- extensive consulting work with the U.S. ing at Vassar in 1923–24. Following the Forest Service, successfully arguing that publication of their plant ecology series in recreation was a legitimate use of the House Beautiful, they revised the articles National Forests and that landscape ar- as a book, American Plants for American chitects should be a part of the National Gardens, published in 1929.64 Rehmann, Forest management teams. who had written broadly about landscape Elsa Rehmann and Edith Roberts architecture, in her article “An Ecological made a convincing case for an ecologi- Approach,” included here, called for inte- cal approach to gardening and landscape grating scientific understanding of ecology

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NLR final_.indd 20 9/20/11 3:45 PM with appreciation for the aesthetics of nat- cursor of natural heritage programs found ural associations in landscape design. in most states today. In addition, Shelford Among the individuals who were deeply included a series of introductory essays by influenced by Liberty Hyde Bailey’s writ- different authors which explored the value ings, particularly The Holy Earth, was Aldo of natural areas to various fields, including Leopold, who would later produce another literature and art, landscape architecture, classic of American conservation, Sand silviculture and forestry, fisheries, geogra- County Almanac, published in 1949. Leo- phy, biology, and agriculture. This set of pold studied forestry at Yale and after gradua- essays is included in The Native Landscape tion went to work for the U.S. Forest Service Reader. Other essays explored the threats to in the Southwest. Over time he became the natural areas at the time and suggested pol- ardent champion for soil conservation, game icies for land preservation. Shelford helped and wildlife management, and wilderness to found the Ecologist’s Union in 1946, preservation he was widely known as. Leo- later renamed The Nature Conservancy.65 pold’s influence was also extended through This collection of writings on the native the founding of the University of Wisconsin’s landscape would be incomplete without a Arboretum, which pioneered ecological res- piece by May Theilgaard Watts. The daugh- toration. His article “The Last Stand of the ter of Danish immigrants, Watts grew up in Wilderness,” included here, was originally Chicago, studied with Henry Cowles, and published in October 1925 in American For- partnered with Jens Jensen to save a prairie ests and Forest Life but was reprinted and remnant in Highland Park, Illinois. In 1940 widely distributed by the American Civic she began a more than twenty-year associa- Association as part of their call for wilder- tion with the Morton Arboretum, where she ness preservation on public lands. worked as an ecologist and naturalist, craft- Another influential book relating to ing innovative programs in environmental conservation and land preservation in the education and building a well-deserved fol- 1920s was Victor Shelford’s impressive lowing among their participants. She was Naturalist’s Guide to the Americas, pub- instrumental in establishing the Illinois lished in 1926. Shelford, also a student of Prairie Path in 1963, now a sixty-one-mile Henry Cowles at Chicago, became a biolo- recreational trail, the first “rail-to-trail” gist at the Illinois Natural History Survey conversion of its kind. Her witty writings and professor of zoology at the University about nature were found in “Nature Afoot,” of Illinois in 1914. In 1915 he helped orga- her regular column in the Chicago Tribune. nize the Ecological Society of America, Her short piece “A Story for Ravinians” and serving as its first president the following a poem, “On Improving the Property,” are year. The organization’s Committee on the included here.66 Preservation of Natural Conditions spon- sored A Naturalist’s Guide to the Americas. The book, which provided a review of the Organization of the Volume natural conditions of each state together with a list of significant natural areas and The Native Landscape Reader is divided a description of their conditions, was a pre- into five thematic sections. The first, “Ap-

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NLR final_.indd 21 9/20/11 3:45 PM preciation of Nature” includes articles on inspiration for designers. Part IV, “Natu- various ways of looking at the native land- ral Parks and Gardens,” further explores scape and noting its value. Part II, “Our how parks and gardens connect people American Flora,” explores nineteenth- with local nature or distance them from and early twentieth-century attitudes to- it. Finally, Part V, “Restoration and Man- ward the native flora, particularly their agement of the Native Landscape,” dem- usefulness in parks and gardens. The es- onstrates the broad foundation built by says in Part III, “The Native Landscape these early practitioners and writers for as a Source of Inspiration,” show how the the conservation and restoration efforts native landscape has been viewed as an that continue today.

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