Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens

Creating the North American Landscape

by Robert E. Grese

Jens Jensen was one of America's greatest landscape designers and conservationists. Using native plants and "fitting" designs, he advocated that our gardens, parks, roads, playgrounds, and cities should be harmonious with nature and its ecological processes—a belief that was to become a major theme of modern American landscape design. In Jens Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens , Robert E. Grese draws on Jensen's writings and plans, interviews with people who knew him, and analyses of his projects to present a clear picture of Jensen's efforts to enhance and preserve "native" landscapes.

Genres: Gardening

328 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

You get the essence of Jensen. Just enough about how his personal life influenced his philosophy.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a gardener and you haven't yet heard of Jens Jensen, I suggest that you read this book. Jensen came to Chicago from Denmark in the 1880s and became one of the region's most important landscape designers. Although much of his work has been lost, in part because of its intentional lack of formality, his influence is apparent in the area's limestone walls, council rings, and cockspur hawthorns. His ideas are as relevant now as they were a hundred years ago. He believed in studying the environment closely, using native plants, and planning for succession and change. He fought hard to protect the Indiana Dunes and other natural areas. He was an early advocate for community gardens; in 1918, under his watch, a hundred children's gardens were planted on public lands. And (as the author writes), "Like Olmsted and other designers before him, he sought to provide people who lived in the city with seemingly natural places in which they could recoup their spirit and be reconnected to the rhythms of nature."

Here's how he advised aspiring landscape designers: "First grow cabbages. After that plant a flower. When you have successfully grown a flower, then you can start to think about growing a tree. After watching a tree grow for several years, observing how its character develops from year to year, then you can begin to think of a composition of living plants - a composition of life itself. Then you will know what landscape architecture is."

I was grateful to learn that some of the approaches I've taken intuitively and incrementally in my own gardening are actually in a spirit like Jensen's, and I'm sure other gardeners will enjoy learning about Jensen.