martinhouseclr

181 4 // ANALYSIS & EVALUATION especially in the homes of the common people.” 48 Miller also appealed to the sentimentality of the emerging ethic within the Prairie Spirit, both comfortingly appealing and bidding to the ‘common-man’: On the other hand, the city merchant may have plenty of money, but not one foot of earth in front of his store. Let us assume that he is tired of the artificial surroundings and goes to the country for a day’s rest and change. And, while there, an idea comes to him – he will have something more permanent and natural than window boxes. He will have vines – the kind he used to like as a boy on the farm, the narrow leaved “woodbine,” a variety of Virginia creeper so common in Illinois that, for purposes of sentiment, we may call it the “Illinois creeper.” He has two holes cut into the concrete sidewalk, and plants his souvenirs of Illinois. To him they may recall the parents that are gone, or they may remind him of “the day” when he is to shut up shop for good and retire to a country home. The passers-by know nothing of all this, but they are glad to see some sign of country beauty in the city. They say, “Life is not all dollars to that man.” Can such simple plantings be called “restorations” in any important sense? Certainly, if they honestly express the individual’s love of the local scenery, 48 Wilhelm Miller, The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening, 1915, 1. combined with his love of home, and town, and state. Restoration is fundamentally an act of the spirit; the scale of the operation is incidental. The essential thing is to plant some permanent reminder of the native beauty, and the cost should always be well within one’s means. A person may prefer to have foreign plants in his garden but he must care enough about the native kinds to plant some of them in the public part of his property. For restoration means more than mere gardening – more than the planting of double roses and lilacs, the beauty of which everyone can see. The “restorer” must prove that he wants to be surrounded by common and native things, rather than by rare and costly foreigners. Everyone will know that it is put there not to display wealth, but in the pure spirit of restoration. 49 Though the Prairie Spirit includes design recommendations, many of which were known to exist within Griffin’s prior-completed landscape design for the Martin House, much of the publication promoted and celebrated the use of native plants. 50 However, as recognized by the 49 Ibid., 10. 50 Some of the shared characteristics with the Martin House landscape features included, “irregular borders of shrubbery that will give more year round beauty than a hedge, trimmed or untrimmed,” the use of trumpet creeper, sumac, elder, hawthorn or “other plans that are sometimes considered coarse for the front of the house,” and notably similar to the tree lawn Martin House plant palette, Walter Burley Griffin “shared neither Miller’s nor Jensen’s pronounced advocacy of native plants nor the use of such devices as Jensen’s miniaturized ‘prairie rivers’. Griffin’s extant planting plans of that time reveal a liberal use of exotic vegetation and horticultural varieties in supplement to natives.” 51 Of Miller’s professional inclusions to his so- called Prairie Spirit, it was Griffin who was more interested in aesthetics, geometry and form, as opposed to native plants and garden design ‘regionalism.’ In fact, it has been argued that Griffin’s inclusion in Miller’s Prairie Spirit was motivated by other factors, including his celebrity from the Canberra competition, rather than his use of native plants. 52 Indeed, prior to his inclusion in Miller’s work and following his departure from Frank Lloyd Wright’s office in late 1905, Griffin “initiated a period of landscape architectural experimentation: a search for his own voice, independent of Wright’s.” 53 This experimentation is profoundly evident in the Martin House garden’s 1906 plantings at the Barton House, ”planting the parkings in order to intensify the sylvan charm of the town and connect all private places with the town ideal.” 51 Christopher Vernon, ‘A legitimate art distinctive of Australia and Australia alone’: The Griffins’ contribution to the formation of an Australian landscape design ethos, 8. 52 Christopher Vernon, introduction to the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series of The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening by Wilhelm Miller, Amherst and Boston, University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. 53 Christopher Vernon, ‘A legitimate art distinctive of Australia and Australia alone’: The Griffins’ contribution to the formation of an Australian landscape design ethos, 4.