Heroes of Horticulture, Related Landscapes
This 67-acre garden was part of the original 155-acre estate of industrialists Sarah Green and Pembroke Jones. In 1901 socialite Sarah Green Jones began planting around the coastal inn she had purchased in 1884. Five years later, the Joneses commissioned German immigrant Rudolf Topel to design a more extensive picturesque garden for the estate. With Topel’s concept, the site evolved into a naturalistic landscape that included man-made lakes and curvilinear paths woven through stands of longleaf pines, magnolias, and live oaks and thousands of azaleas and camellias.
Founded in 1852 as a replacement for Meadville’s older burial ground, Greendale Cemetery was a civic project chartered by private citizens but administered by an independent board. The first Superintendent, Herman Leo, began laying out plots, drives, and walks in 1854. He created winding, park-like drives among the 85 acres of sloping hills, in keeping with the design concepts of the Rural Cemetery movement. Within two years a house was constructed for the caretaker, and other major construction projects would follow over the next two decades.
When automotive pioneer Henry Ford and his wife, Clara, purchased 1,300 acres along Rouge River in 1915, they hired architects Von Holst & Fyfe from Chicago and Pittsburgh’s William Van Tine to design the country residence, Fair Lane. Von Holst recommended landscape architect Jens Jensen to solve grading problems at the house’s foundation.
A property of the Thomas Drayton family since 1676, this Lowcountry plantation included a residence and small garden completed in 1680, eventually becoming the oldest public garden in the country.
In Major Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 Plan for the Capital City, The National Mall was to be a 400-foot wide, mile-long avenue, anchored by the Congress House on the east and a statue of George Washington on the west. An east-west canal, built in 1820 on the north side of the Mall, connected Tiber Creek to the Potomac River.
Once part of a 300,000-acre land grant from the Spanish Crown, Rancho Los Alamitos began as the nearly 30,000-acre inheritance of Juan Jose Nieto, who sold the land to Governor Figueroa. Deeded to the City of Long Beach in 1967, the historic site has been reduced to 7.5 acres and includes the original adobe home and four acres of historic gardens. When John and Susan Bixby arrived in 1878, the outdoor living space developed organizational habits that continue to this day.
Founded in 1845 by the Cincinnati Horticultural Society as a non-profit, non-denominational cemetery, Spring Grove was envisioned as a rural cemetery. Landscape gardener Howard Daniels, who later assisted with the development of Llewellyn Park, in West Orange, New Jersey, was commissioned to develop the design. In 1855, Prussian horticulturist and landscape gardener Adolph Strauch was engaged to address the marshy front third of site.