Cover: A black-and-white photograph shows one of Jens Jensen's prairie rivers in Humboldt Park, Chicago, with reeds in the foreground. Thick vegetation grows along the banks.
An elegant sweep of lawn is surrounded by mature trees in this black-and-white photograph.
This historical photograph shows small shrubs dotting a lawn bisected that is by a walkway. Wilhelm Miller's caption reads "The Gaudy Way of Planting a Lawn."

The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening
Wilhelm Miller

Reprint of 1915 edition, with a new introduction
by Christopher Vernon
ASLA Centennial Reprint Series

Published by University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH

$34.95

To order: University of Massachusetts Press,
tel. 800-537-5487, fax 410-516-6998

 

“The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening is more valuable today than ever. What could be more appropriate than Miller’s call for us to design environmentally sound gardens that proudly display our native plants? Almost a century later we are just beginning to appreciate that genius of the place in which we live—the distinctly American landscape that Miller understood so well.”—James Anthony van Sweden, FASLA

“Miller’s book provides a still-practical handbook for Midwestern gardens that lends a strong historical basis for linking such work today with its precedent.”—Robert E. Grese, Journal of the New England Garden History Society

 

IN 1915 WILHELM MILLER (1869–1938) published The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening, the first book to address the question of a truly American style of landscape design. It remains one of the most significant early treatises on the topic.

This richly illustrated volume features projects by the Danish landscape architect Jens Jensen, whose conservation-oriented designs formed the foundation of the stylistic school Miller was promoting, and many by O. C. Simonds, particularly Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. Miller also includes images of midwestern landscapes by Walter Burley Griffin, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Warren H. Manning, among others.

Miller was emphatic in his preference for native species and his disapproval of tender bedding plants, especially those with showy foliage, which he referred to as “variegated rubbish.” Miller’s horticultural recommendations were aimed primarily at homeowners, but he also intended to influence the design of midwestern farms, parks, and cemeteries.

Christopher Vernon’s insightful new introduction links the prairie style to Wright and other architects of the Progressive Era. Vernon shows how prairie imagery inspired design ideas and how the “prairie style” label helped promote different types of naturalistic work.