For all but the most avid landscape design devotees, the name Jens Jensen may seem slightly familiar but little more. However his beautifully crafted landscapes in Chicago, Indiana, and Wisconsin endure more than a century after his death.
Jensen left his native Denmark and settled in America in 1884 because of his parents’ disapproval of his wife. Starting as a street sweeper for Chicago’s West Park System, he became one of America’s most significant landscape architects.
Northwest Indiana
From still here to long gone, Jensen’s work can be traced throughout this area that abuts Chicago, known by locals as The Region or, if you’re really from there, Da Region. He landscaped the grounds of the South Bay Hotel, a posh place in Indiana Harbor, popular around the turn of the last century.
It was a place for yachtsmen who sailed from Chicago, docking their boats in a cove of Lake Michigan and spending time having good times at the hotel. Not far away, he designed the very stylish city’s water works park near what is now Jeorse Park Beach.
Jensen was the landscape architect for the original park in Marktown in East Chicago. He also drew up plans for Indiana Harbor’s Washington Park in the 1920s when large homes for Inland Steel’s executives were being built along the park’s perimeters. The neighborhood is now designated as the Washington Park Historic District.
He wrote columns for what was then The Hammond Times and now the Times of Northwest Indiana, offering planting advice and was also involved in a project called the Ideal Section, a 1.5-mile stretch of U.S. Hwy. 30 between Dyer and Schererville, part of the Lincoln Highway designed to showcase what highways could be like in a time of unpaved and gravel roads.
According to George Rogge of Miller Beach, Indiana who served on the Lincoln Highway Association and was a board member of Indiana Landmarks, says that Edsel Ford (Jensen also landscaped their Detroit area home that is open for tours), one of the backers of the highway, authorized a payment of $25,000 for Jensen to design a roadside park area and campground. That never came to fruition.
But the memorial Jensen designed honoring the Ideal Section and also Henry C. Ostermann, an early proponent of the Lincoln Highway remains and is surrounded by the native plants he would have chosen.
A member of the Prairie Club–a group of scientists, early environmentalist and those who enjoyed nature who came from Chicago to enjoy the dunes and waters of Lake Michigan, Jensen was instrumental in the fight to save parts of Gary’s shoreline from the encroachment of the steel mills on land now comprising the state and national dunes parks. A fountain he designed is located at the entrance of the Indiana Dunes State Park.
A Splendid Past
In Michigan City, Jensen designed the gardens at the stately Barker Mansion, the former home of a wealthy industrialist built in 1857 and now an opulent example of the Gilded Age is filled with original furnishings and art.
The museum hosts numerous garden events showcasing its brick walkways, formal plantings, fountain, a niche with bench and Tiffany globes, urns overflowing with flowers and climbing bushes with pretty blooms.
The Lost is Found
Dr. David Benson, a biology professor at Marian University in Indianapolis, wanted to revitalize the sprawling grounds of the James Allyson estate where the school is located. But when landscapers started to work, they realized this wasn’t just an overgrown piece of land; it was the work of Jensen. It is among the largest and most intact of his landscapes in the United States.
As an interesting aside, according to the Marian University website, Benson secured the 12th global ranking for identifying an impressive 611 bird species across the lower 48 states during the 2023 calendar year. Reflecting on his monumental feat, Benton described it as “an enormous challenge and a fantastic experience in practical ecology and ornithology.”
According to Deborah Lawrence, Senior Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and General Counsel, who is also involved in the garden project, the 55-acre natural area of native plants, prairie, now the Nina Mason Pulliam EcoLab, is designed to educate through interaction with the environment.
Riverdale, the estate’s formal gardens were also restored. Both contain many of Jensen’s signature elements including a player’s green, and for water features, a series of spring-fed lakes encircling a central clover meadow. The restoration of historic structures include a stone colonnade, fountain, and what Lawrence describes as their version of a council ring.
“The plants are color-coded in purples and blues,” says Lawrence, noting there are walking trails and the grounds are open to visitors. “It’s what Jensen wanted.”
Chicago
Many of Jensen’s memorable works can be seen in Humboldt Park where he expanded the lagoon into the Prairie River, a cascading and meandering waterway with stepping-stone paths and banks lined with native plants. He also built the Prairie-style boat house there
Columbus Park is the only Chicago park completely designed by Jensen, and it is the only place in the city with one of his famed council rings. Part of his heritage, Jensen attended the Folk School in Denmark, a place for learning Danish traditions and culture, including an appreciation of nature. Council rings were part of the concept, used as a way to bring people together in the outdoors, a place to sit, share, and tell stories.
Jensen incorporated Prairie-style elements in his design of the Garfield Park Conservatory, one of the most popular settings for engagement and wedding photos in Chicago.
Up North
After the death of his wife, Jensen, who loved the beauty of Door County, Wisconsin, moved to Ellison Bay, establishing The Clearing Folk School, a place for classes and seminars centering on arts, fine crafts, humanities, and natural sciences. Visitors are welcome to explore the grounds and building and there are also guided hikes.
Jensen also played a part in the preservation of the 1,600-acre Ridges Sanctuary near Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin’s first land trust. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, it’s a wonderful place for hiking.
But its main features are the Upper Range and Lower Range lights dating back to 1870. Set 980 feet apart and aligned on a 340° bearing line, they are the only lighthouses still on range being used as navigational aids.
“Jensen also is credited with having sketched the last mile of Wisconsin 42, north of Ellison Bay leading to the Washington Island Ferry dock,” says Jon Jarosh, Chief Communications Officer at Destination Door County. “The extremely curvy stretch of road is the most photographed stretch of road in Door County.”
Brilliant displays of flowers, vignettes of garden arts, a cast iron bed frame painted white and cozy sitting nooks, a pond, a memorial to a dear friend and such unique structures as a Japanese Garden are all components of the lovely garden created by Grace Gianforte, a two-acre extravaganza celebrating nature’s beauty. In keeping with the woodlands in the back of her more formal gardens, Gianforte and her husband, Peter Katz, maintain the Pier Nature Preserve, a meandering board walk lined by tree trunks leading across bridges, crossing a small stream and offering glimpses of semi-hidden delights—a circle of stained glass placed in the grass, birdhouses, a copper lantern and planters of flowers—is open to all the neighbors on Pier Road, a short road paralleling Lake Michigan north of St. Joseph in Hagar Shores, Michigan. Take a turn when wandering Gianforte’s garden and unexpectedly come across a peace garden, an intricately wrought iron bench and table, rolling waves of shrubs in different shades of luscious greens, a sign with a garden poem and ceramic birdbaths—it’s all a visual treasure hunt.
The gardens have been a passion for Gianforte who lives and works in Chicago a few days each week and then comes back to indulge in a flurry of creativity. Her home, built in the 1920 and located at 5023 Pier Road, is the perfect backdrop of drop-dead garden rooms but unique as it is, it’s just one of a quartet of fabulous gardens on display during the 2018 Symphony League Garden Tour on Sunday, August 5th from Noon to 5pm. The League, the non-profit support organization of the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra, was organized in 1975 to raise funds for the orchestra and holds several very successful fundraisers each year.
The following gardens are on the tour:
Overall, the Ferrantellas’s garden areas offers a comforting and casual ambience. For lazing around there’s a hammock, for entertaining people have gathered in a pretty screened in porch, it’s door painted a bright red that contrasts nicely with the yellow house and its white shutters. The hum of laughing voices mingles along with Here people have the musical sounds of chimes moving in a gentle wind and the clucking of hens whose coop is tucked under a tree house. Tucked among the flowering bushes and masses of plants are pretty settings revolving around garden art and a wrought iron seating area.
Nanistan isn’t the only structure Braun has restored or built, he also has added a gazebo, pergola and trellis in a garden area so large that some are tucked out of sight.
A large pond (dug out by Mike), bordered by hibiscus, iris, bear’s britches, candy tuft and buffalo beans with its spikes of yellow blooms, is accented with a flowing fountain and a statue of a heron.
But it was worth the effort. Shinto’s has fashioned a formal garden with garden rooms as well as fenced vegetable and herb gardens that invite visitors to explore. She uses art and statuary such as blue glass globes, a rustic metal rooster, huge pots of flowering plants, an old red pump mounted on a wooden box, a large geode with its interior crystals revealed, a pond circled by smooth stones and almost hidden by rich green foliage and a vintage toy Volkswagen, made of metal and painted in fading, slightly rusting colors of yellow, red, blue and green with a peace symbol on its hood.
