Lincoln Memorial Garden
The Garden represents the landscape Abraham Lincoln would have known growing up and living in the Midwest, containing plants native to the three states he lived in - Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Designed by internationally-known landscape architect Jens Jensen, this 100-acre site features six miles of trails, footbridges, a pond, eight stone council rings, and dozens of wooden benches inscribed with Lincoln quotes. The woodland and prairie garden beckons to thousands of visitors year round - families, birdwatchers, photographers, artists, nature enthusiasts, and school children - to learn about nature and enjoy the wildflowers, trees and wildlife.
History of Lincoln Memorial Garden
In 1936, Springfield native Harriet Knudson envisioned a unique living memorial to Abraham Lincoln, a garden composed only of plants native to Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, the three states in which Lincoln lived. She convinced the city of Springfield to donate land along the shore of the newly created Lake Springfield, and Mrs. Knudson, a member of the Springfield Civic Garden Club, coordinated a project in which the Garden Clubs of Illinois agreed to sponsor the project. To design the unusual living tribute, Mrs. Knudson was able to secure the services of Jens Jensen, one of the nation's foremost landscape architects.
Jensen had already achieved considerable recognition. A contemporary and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, Jensen was a leader of the Prairie School of landscape architecture and was one of Illinois' earliest conservationists. By the time Jensen came to Springfield to design the Lincoln garden project, he had designed several Chicago city parks, the estates of both Henry and Edsel Ford in Michigan, the showplace estates of several Chicago businessmen in the city's North Shore area, and landscapes and parks throughout the Midwest. The success of Jensen's effort contributed to the Garden being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
Jensen initially selected a 63 acre site consisting of farm fields and a few sparsely wooded areas, where intermittent streams flowed through gently sloping terrain down to the emerging lake. His basic plan for the Garden incorporated a series of connected paths bordered by various arrangements of native plants. The design includes eight council rings, circular stone benches to provide inviting, casual relaxation spots for Garden visitors.
Along the lanes extending from these rings are groupings of native plants amid groves of oaks and hickory trees, open meadows supporting sun-loving prairie species, and other groupings of small flowering trees and shrubs that Jensen used to form borders between the meadows and the woods. Though Lincoln probably never walked through the area now occupied by the Garden, Jensen's design concept was to create a sense of the Midwest landscape that would have been familiar to Lincoln. Jensen's use of native plants achieved this goal; the oaks, maples and hickories, as well as the prairie grasses and forbs---Lincoln could probably have named them all. The first planting at the garden occurred on Nov. 14, 1936, when Scouts planted acorns that have grown into today's towering oaks at the site. The old farm fields against which Mrs. Knudsen and Jensen saw their vision are today a mosaic of mature uplands woods and prairie openings.
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