Pioneer Information
Born in Indiana, Kissack graduated from Ashland College in 1918 and later received a B.S. from Ohio State. Kissack eventually settled in Cleveland, where she established a landscape architecture practice with Elsetta Gilchrist and Hannah Champlin in the 1930s. Both members of the Western Reserve Herb Society, Kissack was consulted by Gilchrist to design the Western Reserve Herb Society herb garden at the Garden Center of Cleveland (now Cleveland Botanical Garden) in Wade Park. As part of a Civil Works Administration-funded project to improve Cleveland’s public space, Kissack participated in the City Plan Commission’s Landscape Division, suggesting landscape developments for the Cleveland Airport, Lincoln Park, the parkland at the Carnegie West branch of the Cleveland Public Library, Franklin Circle and its neighboring parkland, and the new campus of Blossom Hill Home for Delinquent Girls in Brecksville. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kissack enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, where she was assigned to the architectural section of the Coast Guard Headquarters in Virginia to design planting plans for various projects.
Kissack wrote numerous practical articles on home garden design, plants and maintenance for Landscape Architecture magazine with Gilchrist and Real Gardening magazine with Gilchrist and Champlin. Kissack died at the age of 94 and is buried in Ashland, Ohio.
