Monthly Archives: December 2009

Lindenwood Cemetery

2324 W. Main Street
Fort Wayne
(260) 432-4542

Map

A natural grove of linden trees inspired the name ‘Lindenwood’ when the cemetery was incorporated in 1859. John Chislett, an English architect who had trained in Bath, designed Lindenwood Cemetery in the 18th-century picturesque style, with winding roads creating a park-like setting. His original plan remains intact as one of Indiana’s oldest designed landscapes. The land’s natural topography, with wooded ravines and gently rolling hillocks, adds to the cemetery’s picturesque qualities. Lindenwood’s first superintendent, John Doswell, who had been active as a landscape architect in England, created grottoes, gazeboes, and small stone bridges that today provide interesting vista points. The Romanesque Revival chapel was designed by local architects Wing and Mahurin in 1895.

Hillforest

213 Fifth Street
Aurora
(812) 926-0087
www.hillforest.org

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Located on a steep, terraced hillside that overlooks the Ohio River, Hillforest estate epitomizes a mid- 19th-century Romantic era landscape. In 1853 the first owner, Thomas Gaff, hired prominent architect Isaiah Rogers to design this distinctive Italianate house. Great attention was paid to creating formal circulation paths, both pedestrian and vehicular, that climb to the house from the terminus of Aurora’s Main Street. Although some site features such as rustic bridges, gardens and arbors have disappeared, the house still enjoys extensive views of the scenic river valley that was so crucial to early travel and commerce in the U.S. The National Park Service honored Hillforest with National Historic Landmark status in 1992.

Oliver Gardens

808 W. Washington Street
South Bend

(574) 235-9664
centerforhistory.org

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Around 1907 industrialist J.D. Oliver worked with designer Alice Neale to plan a formal garden and pergola to complement his imposing home, Copshaholm, designed by New York architect Charles Alonzo Rich in 1895. Twenty years later, Julia King redesigned the sunken garden. Today the gardens are being restored to reflect the year 1915, when the Oliver family used their gardens extensively for social gatherings. The grassy mound was replanted with trees to fulfill Oliver’s vision. The massively built, long, vine-covered brick pergola shelters the path from the house to the formal gardens. A garden tea house, tennis lawn and ornate stone fountain enhance the 2.5-acre residential site.

Taltree Arboretum & Gardens

450 West 100 North
Valparaiso
(219) 462-0025
www.taltree.org

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Taltree Arboretum & Gardens is dedicated to providing educational opportunities in arboriculture, ecology, horticulture, natural history and conservation of natural resources. Located on more than 300 acres on the Valparaiso moraine, the preserve features Indiana’s largest oak collection with more than 80 species of temperate and sub-tropical oaks from around the world. Taltree has restored more than 35 acres of tall-grass prairie on former agricultural land; in combination with wetland restoration and reforestation, the landscape is being returned to its pre-settlement conditions. Among its many fine gardens is the Welcome Garden, which exhibits a wide array of uncommon plants including Asian maples, Stewartia, and a grove of Katsura.

George Rogers Clark Memorial

401 S. Second Street
Vincennes
(812) 882-1776, ext. 110
www.nps.gov/gero

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In the 1920s, prior to the 150th anniversary of the capture of Fort Sackville from the British in 1779, citizens of Vincennes became interested in honoring local hero George Rogers Clark with a memorial near the new Lincoln Memorial Bridge planned to cross the Wabash River. The fort’s site was then in oblivion under a grain elevator, mills, and a warehouse, all razed for the memorial. The large-scale granite monument — 90 feet wide at its base — was completed with federal funds in 1933. It was complemented by a landscaped, terraced park designed by architect William E. Parsons of Chicago, who had planned the U.S. Botanical Gardens. The site was transferred to the National Park Service in 1966.

Garfield Park

2600 Shelby Street
Indianapolis
(317) 327-7226
garfieldgardens-
conservatory.org

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Garfield Park is one of 12 Indianapolis parks interconnected by a system of parkways and boulevards, created by renowned German-American landscape architect George Kessler. (At 3,400 acres, the system is one of the largest listings on the National Register of Historic Places.) Although Garfield Park’s origins date to the 1870s, the city’s hiring of Kessler in 1908 marked a period of comprehensive development of the park’s distinctive drives, walks and bridges. The Sunken Gardens are an outstanding surviving example of Kessler’s work. Its formal parterre, designed in 1913 in conjunction with the conservatory’s terrace, features extensive planting beds and water features with fountains. The Pagoda, a beloved shelter house, is one of the city’s oldest park structures.

Riverdale

Marian University Campus
3200 Cold Spring Road
Indianapolis
(317) 955-6208
www.marian.edu

Map

Riverdale is Indiana’s largest and most intact landscape designed by Jens Jensen, one of the most prominent landscape architects of the Midwest in the early 20th century. All of the hallmarks of Jensen’s style — most notably the use of native vegetation and water features — are present on the 64-acre estate of Indianapolis industrialist James Allison, who hired Jensen in 1911. At the base of the bluff below the Allison Mansion, there is a series of spring-fed lakes that surround a central meadow. Drives and trails with bridges were built to take advantage of this landscape, now the university’s EcoLab. Near the house, a stone colonnade echoes Jensen’s famous council rings and is the focus of the formal perennial garden.

Oldfields

Indianapolis Museum of Art
4000 Michigan Road
(317) 923-1331
www.imamuseum.org

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Oldfields, the home of Hugh and Jessie Landon, is a well-preserved example of an understated American country estate, which later was owned by the J.K. Lilly Jr., family. In 1920 the Landons hired the renowned landscape firm Olmsted Brothers after visiting a garden in Maine designed by Percival Gallagher, a principal of the company. Gallagher’s vision transformed Oldfields, anchoring the house firmly in the landscape and providing dramatic views and pleasant garden walks. Among Gallagher’s designs for Oldfields were the tree-lined allée along the broad lawns east of the house, a redesigned formal garden, and the Ravine Garden, which extends along the hillside between the house and the Central Canal and imaginatively incorporates a wide range of plants with spring and fall bloom.

Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site

1205 Pleasant Point
Rome City
(260) 854-3790
www.indianamuseum.org

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Gene Stratton-Porter was one of Indiana’s most revered writers at the turn of the 20th century, as well as one of the country’s first nature photographers. Her novels engendered an appreciation of nature at a time when losses of natural areas — such as her beloved Limberlost Swamp — were accelerating. The Porters built their second home, the “Cabin in Wildflower Woods,” on Sylvan Lake in 1913. The site’s forest provided a rich source of material for her nature studies, writing and photography. Concerned with the loss of the state’s native plants, she planted wildflowers from across Indiana in her wildflower gardens. A variety of gardens, an arbor, an orchard and many scenic paths are still intact on the 125-acre site.

Lakeside Park

1401 Lake Avenue
Fort Wayne
(260) 427-6000
www.fortwayneparks.org

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Lakeside Park’s origins go back to 1890 with Lakeside Park Addition, Ft. Wayne’s first suburb. However, concerted park development began in 1912 and continued for the next 20 years. Located to the north of the Maumee River and east of the St. Joseph River, the plan for the 26-acre park capitalized on the natural topography for the creation of lagoons and a sunken garden (restored in 2006). As the park’s name implies, its system of interconnected waterways made it a popular destination year-round for active recreation, such as ice skating and boating. Lakeside Park is perhaps best known today for its Rose Garden, which displays 2,000 plants and at least 150 varieties.