Landslide 2006: Spotlight on the Garden
The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Garden Design magazine unveil the 14 landslide sites for Landslide 2006: Spotlight on the Garden.

The following list is a summary of the 14 thematic landslide sites for Landslide 2006: Spotlight on the Garden. The list, developed by the Cultural Landscape Foundation and Garden Design magazine, was unveiled on May 19 at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

A Rare, Surviving Prairie School Masterwork: Becker Estate, Highland Park, Illinois

Legendary landscape architect Jens Jensen designed the Prairie Style grounds of the Becker Estate (1921–1927) high on a breathtaking bluff above Lake Michigan. The property presently is in receivership, and it is anticipated that the current owners will dispose of the Becker Estate at the best price possible. Support must be raised and plans set in place to protect Jensen’s design. This estate is a rare, surviving masterwork and one that Jensen himself celebrated.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Mute Victims of Katrina: Four Coastal Louisiana Landscapes

Amongst the destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, few victims have received less national attention than Louisiana’s historic designed landscapes. This 2006 “Landslide” entry recognizes these threatened properties:

• Longue Vue House and Gardens, New Orleans
• The New Orleans Botanical Garden, New Orleans
• Oak Island Plantation and Laura Plantation, Vacherie, Louisiana

From direct damage by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina to severe collateral damage from decreased tourist revenues, these sites continue to suffer the devastating effects of these two powerful storms. These astonishing cultural landscapes will require both public and private support to take them through an intensely traumatic time and forward into an era of recovery.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Preserving a Puerto Rican Treasure: The Landscapes and Gardens of Jajome

Built during the interwar era (1917–1939), many country homesteads in Cayey’s barrio of Jajome exemplify a local Puerto Rican landscape design tradition previously thought to be extinct. These properties link architectural typology with topography, and their gardens are integrated into the terrain as strategic features rather than as decoration. Lack of professional documentation of the gardens—as well as the potential for mining in this zone—jeopardize this ‘invisible’ patrimony, risking not only the landscapes themselves but also the collective civic and societal heritage of Cayey and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Garden and Forest: The Dunn Garden, an Olmsted Brothers Country Place Estate in Seattle

The 1916 Olmsted Brothers master plan by James Dawson retained and enhanced many of Dunn Garden’s natural features, including its large stands of second-growth Douglas firs and its sweeping views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. The current threat is to the forest, which is in decline due to age, removal, and subsequent exposure to winds: Both the forest and the spatial character of the property are at risk. Along with public awareness, the property requires funding for a computer-based landscape preservation study and master plan. Dunn Gardens aspires to repurchase portions of the original acreage and to develop a public outreach center.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Farrand’s Garden in the Valley: Dumbarton Oaks Park

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CAPTION: Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Dumbarton Oaks Park, located in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., occupies 27 acres of a valley through which flows a small, unnamed tributary stream of Rock Creek. Under the ownership of Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss from 1920 to 1940, famed landscape architect Beatrix Farrand created both the famous formal gardens and a naturalistic landscape in the valley below. Now owned by the National Park Service, four challenges must be resolved: 1) ever-increasing stormwater flows caused by upstream urban and suburban development; 2) deteriorated architectural features; 3) overgrown and invasive exotic vegetation; and 4) lack of established funding for routine and seasonal maintenance and for interpretation. Support is needed to help the NPS secure funding to preserve this important public garden.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Close to Nature: The Gerdemann Garden

Dr. Jim Gerdemann and his wife Janis found the perfect area in the country to retire and create their dream garden: a 3.5-acre piece of property north of Yachats, Oregon, on the lower slope of Green Mountain facing the Pacific Ocean. The Gerdemann Garden is a woodland garden created in a coastal forest that retains as much as possible of the original vegetation and character of the forest. Yachats also has become a high-end residential area, and the garden could be subdivided into 5 or more residential lots, destroying the garden and its rare plants. The Gerdemanns (now in their 80s) and their friends want to establish an irrevocable easement to preserve the garden, find a compatible nonprofit to fund its maintenance and enforce the easement, and maintain access to the Gerdemann Garden for the public’s enjoyment and education in perpetuity.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Restoring the Future: Marian Cruger Coffin’s “Gibraltar” Gardens

Marian Cruger Coffin designed Gibraltar’s “Country Place Era” gardens for the H. Rodney Sharp family in 1916. Construction on the gardens, located in Wilmington, Delaware, continued until 1923. Coffin was among the first women formally trained in landscape architecture. Typical of the time, the property is Italianate in design but English in planting style. Sharp was an enthusiastic gardener and world traveler, and the Sharps themselves collected the 35 statues that grace the gardens. Preservation Delaware saved the property and its gardens from demolition in 1990 and has run the property as a free public garden, open from dawn to dusk. In order to secure an “adaptive reuse” for the mansion, however, the entire property is now up for sale, with the intention that Preservation Delaware would lease the garden back from the new owner. In the interim, Preservation Delaware wants to broadcast that this valuable garden is here and is in need of assistance.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Preservation (and) Education in Vermont: Goddard’s Greatwood Gardens

Master landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff designed Greatwood Gardens for William S. Martin’s Greatwood Farm, including the Formal and Rose Gardens (ca. 1908) and the Upper Garden (ca. 1918). In 1938, the Goddard Seminary moved to Greatwood Estate and became Goddard College, which now provides intensive residency programs at both the BA and MA levels. The Goddard College Greatwood Estate Campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Goddard College’s president, board, and facilities director are aware of the historic significance of the Greatwood campus and are committed to restoring it. Public recognition of Shurcliff’s Greatwood Gardens will help to validate and encourage these garden preservation efforts—an especially important endeavor in Vermont, a state with very few surviving historic estate landscapes.

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A Beloved Old Friend at the End of Her Resources: Sioux City’s Latham Park

Benjamin and Elizabeth Latham retired from farming in 1899 and moved their three children to the Latham Park property in Sioux City. Today, the Latham Park house and grounds are nearly one acre in size and comprise the northern half of a city residential block. The traditional design of the grounds has been faithfully maintained. However, after 65 years, rising costs and dwindling trust assets have put the future of the park in jeopardy. Community members and Friends of Latham Park have been generous. Ultimately, an endowment that returns $20,000 for ongoing maintenance and restoration needs will be required—otherwise, Latham Park is in danger of being subdivided and sold to developers.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

High Above the Hudson: Russel Wright’s “Manitoga”

In 1941, Russel and Mary Wright purchased 80 acres on the east side of the Hudson River near the hamlet of Garrison, New York. Wright approached the forest as a sculptor, slowly revealing its character and bringing out its most subtle and beautiful features. Present threats to the property (now run by Manitoga Inc.) come from the woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) that infests the hemlocks and from the deer that are browsing upon the few seedlings the stressed hemlocks produce. Soil erosion as well as vegetation management issues now threaten Wright’s careful landscape design. In addition to basic preservation planning, interim protection and stabilization efforts must be undertaken to treat the hemlock trees, manage the deer population, and control the on-site erosion. Ultimately, donations and/or grants are needed to support these—and other—essential historic landscape preservation activities for this National Historic Landmark property.

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Irises in Virginia: Margaret Thomas’s Garden

Margaret Thomas and her husband George moved onto their Herndon, Virginia, property in 1963. Margaret started an iris garden with irises donated by her neighbor “...that were much prettier than mine.” Widowed in 1972, she supported herself and her son by selling irises and vegetables. Since then, for more than 30 years, she has opened her gardens to photographers, painters, school groups, community adult education classes, and many others. The garden has become a mainstay for the area and provides community identity: It also is the last open space left on the busy Reston–Fairfax corridor. Margaret Thomas (now 84) is not in a financial position to donate her land to Fairfax County. However, if the land could be saved via a conservation easement, the garden could be run using the revenue from the sale of the plants and grant funding, along with the potential use of the property as a “Green Technology Center.”

Image courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

An Irrational Fate: Kiley’s Garden at NationsBank Plaza

Architect Harry Wolf and landscape architect Dan Kiley transformed a riverside lot in downtown Tampa, Florida, into a corporate headquarters. While Wolf designed a 33-story tower and two 6-story cubic bank pavilions, Kiley designed a 4-acre garden based upon the mathematical sequence of the buildings’ fenestrations, the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical synthesis of building and garden—and the transformation of the sequence of irrational numbers into the rationale for the placement of design elements—resulted in a powerful and cohesive design of historical significance. Kiley is arguably the most important international landscape architect of the twentieth century, and the NationsBank Plaza Park is one of Kiley’s finest works. Present threats to the property include redevelopment, loss of design elements, and deferred maintenance. However, there is significant national and community support for Kiley’s work, and the press and the public should continue to pressure the city to support the preservation of Kiley’s Park Plaza in its entirety.

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At the Roots of Florida Horticulture: Henry Nehrling’s Palm Cottage Gardens

Palm Cottage Garden contains the home and remaining gardens of Dr. Henry Nehrling, nationally known horticulturist and ornithologist, and the “patron saint of Florida gardens.” Here, in Gotha, Florida, Nehrling achieved his dream of having a garden where he could grow tropical and subtropical plants year-round. In fact, this property became Florida’s first experimental botanical garden, the site where Nehrling tested more than 3,000 new and rare plants for the United States Department of Agriculture. Today, the carefully preserved remaining core of this historic property is on the market. The Henry Nehrling Society is working diligently to find a way to purchase it and operate it as the Nehrling Gardens History and Horticulture Education Center.

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“Community” Gardens: Peachtree Heights West—Carrere and Hastings Only Suburb

Begun in 1910, Peachtree Heights West is the only known suburb designed by the illustrious New York architects Carrere and Hastings. Many nationally and locally noted landscape architects and architects designed its homes and gardens, and the suburb was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. Due in part to the common palette used by the architects and landscape architects, Peachtree Heights West evinces an enormous visual consistency. Today, the demolition of the original houses—and their replacement with houses two and three times the size of the original structures—threatens to destroy the fabric of the community, the original setbacks of the residences, and the remaining original gardens. Public awareness, historic district preservation guidelines, conservation easements, and private agreements between neighbors could help to retain the design heritage of this historic suburb.

Image courtesy of Robert Nicolais and The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Serenity in SoCal: Baldwin Hills Village (Village Green)

Baldwin Hills Village (also known as Village Green) is a residential subdivision in Los Angeles and is a National Historic Landmark. The creation of a stellar design team (Reginald Johnson, architect; Clarence Stein, consulting architect; and Fred Barlow, landscape architect), this property fully realizes Stein’s “Superblock” found (in incomplete form) at Radburn, New Jersey. Living units within Village Green’s designed community focus on continuous armature of green space: Housing is a background element within the landscape, and cars remain on the perimeter. The Village Green Homeowners Association has committed to developing a Cultural Landscape Report that would deter the addition of inappropriate elements to this truly great American landscape. Public recognition would further validate this effort.