Jens Jensen: Landscape Architect

Jens Jensen: Landscape Architect

Jens Jensen 9/13/1860-10/1/1951 was a Danish-American landscape architect. He worked with many famed architects such as Howard Van Doren Shaw, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and George Maher.

He immigrated from Slesvig to America in 1885 and was known for his early work in park system of Chicago, IL. His design work that received international recognition for design can be seen at Union Park, Lincoln Park, Douglas Park and Columbus Park. At Union Park in 1888 is where he transplanted wildflowers of America creating what became the American Garden in 1888. From 1936-39 Jensen designed and planted the Lincoln Memorial Park in Springfield, IL.

He retired from the park system  in 1920, and started his own practice and worked on many private mid-western estates such as Eleanor and Edsel Ford in four of their residences plus Frank Lloyd Wright’s  the Avery Coonley House and Willits Houses  of Chicago, IL.

Jensen’s landscape elements were a diversity of tree, plant and animal life and combined aesthetics history and nature as noted in www.havenhillproject.org suggests.

Jensen employed his ”delayed view” approach in designing the arrival at the residence of Clara and Henry Ford at Fair Lane, in Dearborn MI.  There is no straight drive to the house, but one must proceed through dense woodland areas, bends in the drive with curves arc and large trees giving a feel of a natural reason for the turn and obscuring the long view.

You are then propelled out and see the residence in fully view. Meadows and gardens make the landscape with masses of flowers surrounding the house.

The Great Meadow at Fair Lane leads out from the terrace with a slight bend in its length.  At the far end of the meadow is a small pond with a cluster of white birches on the edge of the woods.  During the summer the early morning sun softly highlights these trees while the evening sun sets at the end of the path to the setting sun.

It is written that “Path of the Setting Sun” is aligned so that on the summer solstice the setting sun glows through a precise parting of the trees at meadow’s end. The house and its landscape are preserved as a historic landscape and a museum with a National Historic Landmark. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/detroit/d36.htm   http://library.umd.umich.edu/archon/?p=creators/creator&id=59

http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/pic/2007/07_oct.asp 

In 1935 Jensen moved from IL to Ellison Bay, Wisconsin and established  “The Clearing”, which he called, “the school  of the soil” to train future landscape architects. www.theclearing.org

 He summed up his philosophy by saying: ”Every Plant has fitness and must be placed in its proper surroundings so as to bring out its full beauty. Therein lies the art of landscaping.”

Diane Schrenk, President