Our Shaker Lakes Connection
Barb Shockey
The Shaker Lakes Garden Club was borne out of the need to protect and improve the Shaker Parklands.
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Filtering by Category: Garden Design
The Horseshoe Lake Saga
Barb Shockey
Major change is happening in the Shaker Lakes Parklands right under our nose…
Our beautiful Horseshoe Lake is gone. The 12 acre lake is largely dry with invasive plants growing unchecked.
Read MoreGarden History and Design
Ruth Swetland Eppig
The Shaker Lakes Garden Club's history is entwined with that of the Shaker Lakes Park and the Nature Center of Shaker Lakes.
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Ruth Eppig & Carol Michel
Since the Garden Club of America is celebrating Frederick Law Olmsted this year, and our own club has been reading about his life, our column this month will continue to highlight the impact of Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons’ firm in Cleveland area gardens.
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Ruth Swetland Eppig
The Fine Arts Garden was opened and dedicated on July 3, 1928 celebrating all of the planning, philanthropy, plantings and sculpture. This was the culmination of the efforts of the Garden Club of Cleveland to create a fitting park in front of the new neoclassical façade of the Cleveland Museum of Art on property that had been donated by Jeptha Wade - now called Wade Park.
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Ruth Swetland Eppig
Cleveland has a rich history in Garden Design. The first Golden Age of estate and public gardens occurred in the late 1920s and 1930s. I intend to research that history and write about gardens of that era that are local. It is fascinating to discover who built those gardens and who designed them.
Read MoreSplendor From the Grass
Lee Jacobs
Conceived by the Van Sweringen brothers as a luxury residential development, Moreland Courts comprises 15 distinct buildings of English-Georgian design with decorative elements taken from Tudor, Gothic, and Jacobean styles.*
Read MoreLANDSCAPE DESIGN IN THE WESTERN WORLD – OR THE LACK OF IT – DURING THE MIDDLE AGES
Robin Schachat
Now we emerge from the heyday of culture and landscape design during the “Dark” and Middle Ages, in Andalusia, to discuss what was happening in the rest of Europe. Let’s begin with the Roman Empire, briefly, and go from there.
Read MoreThe Evolution of Western Garden Design: the Great Moorish Gardens of Spain
Robin Schachat
Now, where were we on our exploration of the history of western garden design? Just about to depart the Islamic gardens of the Middle East, as I recall? Let’s have a quick recap of the classic garden elements we met there.
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Robin Schachat
The Origins of Garden Design in the Western World
Historically, garden designs in East Asia developed distinctly differently than those of the Mediterranean basin and, subsequently, Europe and the European-inflected Americas. So I will begin this year’s Garden History and Design articles with a look at the traditions of garden design that we typically associate with the “Western World”, from which the majority of our greatest American gardens derive their style.
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Mary Anne Liljedahl and Joan Fountain
Every visit to Paris in late April and May, I have the pleasure of enjoying the beautiful chestnut trees in full bloom. This makes me both happy and sad.
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Mary Anne Liljedahl
The John’s Island Garden Club took a field trip to BOK Tower Gardens in Lake Whales, Florida. SLGC member’s Mary Susan Lyon and Sandy Holmes are both members and I was lucky enough to be invited.
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Joan Fountain
On a recent visit to Lisbon, Portugal, I had the opportunity to visit the National Palace of Queluz. It was originally built as a summer palace for Portugal’s King Pedro, but thirteen years later became the permanent royal residence. This is an exquisite palace with formal gardens and parkland. Queluz is very much like a miniature Versailles.
Read MoreGarden Follies
Mary Anne Liljedahl and Joan Fountain
What is a Garden Folly? English country estates are often associated with intricate networks of rooms and strict social hierarchies. But just outside the country house is an entirely different world—the garden, a freer, more whimsical space where the rules are relaxed. A garden is a place of diversion, distraction and sometimes fantasy. While the house itself is an organized, ordered culture, outside one encounters rain and heat and wind and various surprises. A walk through the garden is different every time. One means of diversion was through the construction of garden follies, little structures that punctuate the landscape.
Read MoreLearn About Garden Design
Dozie Herbruck
House and Garden Walk - June 20 & 21, 2018
Lake Forest Garden Club, Lake Forest, Illinois