Pioneer Information
Born at his father’s farm, Bösbyfield, near the city of Eckemförde, Denmark (now Germany), Ehlers attended the Forestry Institute in Kiel. Upon graduating in 1830 he became responsible for the institution’s associated Forestry Arboretum, and in 1833 he received a joint appointment as assistant to the municipality’s Forestry Board.
Around 1841, Ehlers emigrated to the United States and began his career as a landscape gardener. He worked chiefly in New York’s Hudson River Valley, where in 1849 at the Rokeby estate in Barrytown, he laid out woodland carriage drives and bridges; advised on tree plantings; and designed a gatehouse. That same year, Ehlers produced plans for a neighboring property Steen Valetje (later called Mandara) and designed an arboretum at Montgomery Place, in nearby Annandale-on-Hudson. Ehlers also purportedly laid out the initial plan of the Ferncliff estate in Rhinebeck, New York, which was later developed by his son, Louis Augustus Ehlers. The elder Ehlers died in Brooklyn, New York, in 1858, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
