Wiedorn in Kansas III

In 1924, landscape architect William S. Wiedorn published an article intended for Kansas property owners desirous of improving their yards. "Beautifying the Home Grounds of Kansas" included general advice and a comprehensive planting list. For those struggling to design their gardens, Wiedorn offered the advice of K-State Agricultural College's horticultural department provided inquiring parties supplied a plat.

A LIST OF TREES, SHRUBS AND PLANTS FOR KANSAS HOME GROUNDS

TREES FOR STREET PLANTING

White elm
Pin Oak
Silver maple
Hackberry
Sycamore
Honey locust

TREES FOR YARD PLANTING

Basswood
Tulip tree
Green ash
Osage orange
Russian mulberry

SHRUBS

Japanese barberry
Van Houtes spires
Common privet
Armur river privet
Buckthorn
Bush hydrangea
Butterfly bush
Tamarisk
Fragrant sumac
Staghorn sumac
Indian currant
Japanese quince
Golden bell
Morrow's honeysuckle
Red-twigged dogwood
Common lilac
Rose of Sharon
Mock orange

VINES

Bittersweet
Japanese clematis
Jackman's clematis
Five-leaved ivy
Climbing roses: Dorothy Perkins, Crimson rambler, Climbing American Beauty, Tausenschon

EVERGREENS

Trees

Scotch pine
Austrian pine
Jack pine
Bull pine
Red cedar (best evergreen for Kansas)
Douglas spruce

Shrubs

Fragrant honeysuckle
Low juniper

Vines

Memorial rose
Hall's honeysuckle

ROSES

Prairie Rose

FLOWERS

Bulbs (Spring)

Crocus
Narcisssus
Tulip
Hyacinth

Bulbs (Summer)

Tiger lilies
Dahlias
Gladiolus
Cannas

PERENNIALS

English daisy
Periwinkle
Columbine
Bleeding heart
Iris
Goat's beard
Sweet William
Foxglove
Oriental poppy
Garden pinks
Oriental larkspur
Hollyhocks
Carpathian harebells
Hardy phlox
Peonies
Asters
Evening primroses
Gaillardia
Coreposis
Shasta daisies
Yucca filamentosa

From:  W.S. Wiedorn. "Beautifying the Home Grounds of Kansas." The Biennial Report of the Kansas State Horticultural Society. Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1924, pp. 150-156.

Wiedorn in Kansas II

A previous post introduced William S. Wiedorn's work while employed as an assistant professor of landscape gardening at the Kansas State Agricultural College. During this period, he published "A Brief History of Gardening" and "Beautifying the Home Grounds of Kansas" for the state's horticultural society.

He began his historical essay with Sir Francis Bacon's On Gardens:

"Men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection."

His survey introduced ancient gardens and exalted the urban ones that had been discovered at Pompeii (Plate I, above). He equally favored the Islamic gardens of southern Spain and those of Louis XIV (Plate II, below).

For early American architecture, his essay highlighted "Spanish" gardens in the South, "High English" gardens in Virginia, "Catholic" ones in Maryland, "Quaker" and "German" in Pennsylvania, "Swedish" in New Jersey, "Dutch" in New York, "Puritan" in New England and "French" in Canada. He included his 1922 sketch of the Patio Royal in New Orleans (Plate III, below) to illustrate the southern garden, which he equated with violets, heliotropes, carnations, lobelia, iris, lilies, tulips, hyacinths, roses, oleanders, rose bay, myrtle and jasmine.

Reflecting on the modern American garden of his day, Wiedorn emphasized an increased formality in design and a growing attention to urban parks:

"The American is becoming more and more a city man, and his civic pride runs high. Evidences of this are seen in our new parks, cemeteries and garden cities. The American thinks and works in larger areas than flower gardens; he is more interested in open lawns, lakes, trees and shrubs. Flower gardening, unlike the European practice, is the last phase to be developed. The American excels in developing parks and is laying the foundations for the finest natural park scenery in the world. Our cemeteries are being treated as natural parks. Garden cities or land subdivisions, in which every house and garden is part of a large unit, are being built everywhere. Such divisions as Forest Hills (Queens), New York; the Country Club District, Kansas City; and Roland Park, Baltimore, have set standards which others are adopting."

Johns Hopkins doctoral candidate Paige Glotzer has been documenting Kansas City financial connections to Roland Park and the subdivision's influence on other real estate developments and federal housing policies. 

More on Wiedorn's Kansas planting recommendations later.

Images and quoted matter (unless otherwise indicated) from:  W.S. Wiedorn. “A Brief History of Gardening.” The Biennial Report of the Kansas State Horticultural Society XXXVII. Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1924, pp. 127-137. University Archives, Kansas State University Libraries.

Wiedorn in Kansas

New Orleans landscape architect William Wiedorn (1896-1990) taught landscape gardening at Kansas State Agricultural College from 1920-1924. During part of that time, the college advised on more than 201 landscape gardening efforts in 32 counties. While some 18% were public parks, the vast majority were private residential beautification projects.(1)

Wiedorn worked with horticulture professor Albert Dickens to supervise the improvement of the state capitol grounds in Topeka. They installed an underground irrigation system and recommended turning under an expanse of Sudan grass followed by a blue grass sowing. (2)

Dodge City hired the young landscape designer to superintend the planting of nearly 800 trees and shrubs in its Wright Park.(3) Other projects included the Augusta High School, Kansas State Penitentiary (Lansing), the Osawatomie Hospital and the Kansas State Tubercular Sanitarium (Norton). The latter is shown below.

The former tuberculosis hospital is now home to the Norton Correctional Facility.

(1)"College Lends Aid in Kansas Landscaping." Industrialist 18 October 1922.

(2)"Dickens and Wiedorn Help Beautify Capitol Grounds." Industrialist 28 September 1921.

(3)"Farmers as Guests." The Hutchinson News 13 April 1922.

Images above:  "William S. Wiedorn" in The Royal Purple. Detail enhanced. 1922; The Royal Purple. Detail enhanced. 1924. "Landscape Gardening" in Sixth Biennial Report of the State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis, Norton, Kansas for the Two Years Ending June 30, 1924. Topeka, 1924.

William S. Wiedorn

William “Bill” Shaffrath Wiedorn (1896-1990) was a prominent landscape architect and town planner. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he graduated from Waterbury High School (CT), and then served in the United States Army during World War I as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry division’s machine gun section. After receiving his Bachelor of Science (1919) and while completing his Master of Landscape Design (1921) degree at Cornell University, Wiedorn was a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). During this period, he also worked as an assistant designer for the Olmsted Brothers in Brookline, Massachusetts. In their employ, he contributed to the development of large estate subdivisions and park design. Most notably, he devised the planting and grading of the Rolling Rock Country Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


Image above:  William S. Wiedorn, landscape architect. New Orleans City Park Administration Building and the Climatron Area. [Detail].  George J. Riehl, chairman, Technical Advisory Committee. 16 June 1965.

Shannon Lee Dawdy MacArthur Recipient

University of Chicago anthropologist Shannon Lee Dawdy has received a 2010 MacArthur Grant in recognition of her scholarship. In recent years, her work has largely focused on New Orleans. Read more/watch a video here.

Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans is available through Tulane University Libraries.

At Large in the Library: Birdfoot

A new arrival to the Tulane School of Architecture Library and the Special Collections Division's Louisiana Collections is the Center for Land Use Interpretation's exhibition catalog, Birdfoot: Where America's River Dissolves into the Sea (Los Angeles, first edition, 2008). GB1227.M6 B57

The small-format book, published by CLUI with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, documents the fragile alluvium southeast of New Orleans. Read more about this 35-mile stretch of the Mississippi in the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Spring 2008/Volume 31 Newsletter here.

Above: Exhibit postcard, Birdfoot: Where America's River Dissolves into the Sea. Los Angeles: CLUI 2008.

Opening Soon: In-Situ

The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design has announced a new exhibition opening in April.  Titled In-Situ: Architecture and Landscape, the show presents a series of projects from MOMA's collections that center on relationships between the built environment and its natural surroundings, projects such as parks, homes, cemeteries and urban developments.  To read more, click here.

In a similar vein, the National Building Museum recently opened an exhibition focused on architectural projects dotted along Norway's Public Roads Administration's Tourist Routes.  In conjunction with Detour: Architecture and Design along 18 National Tourist Routes in Norway, the National Building Museum screened the 2003 film, Schultze Gets the Blues, largely set in Louisiana Bayou country. Watch the trailer here.

On the west coast, the Museum of Contemporary Art launched Dan Graham: Beyond which includes his Homes for America (1966-1967), developed from Kodak Instamatic photographs Graham took while traveling by train through New Jersey suburban tract housing developments.  Science fiction writer and contributor to MOCA's related exhibition catalog Mark Van Schlegell will be speaking at MOCA on March 8th at 3 pm.  He was recently asked in an interview, "Why is so much contemporary science fiction inherently about Los Angeles?"  Read his answer here.