Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens Book

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.