Once maligned as a swampy outpost, the fledgling city of Chicago brazenly adopted the motto Urbs in horto, or City in a Garden, in 1837. "Chicago Gardens" shows how this upstart town earned its sobriquet over the next century, from the first vegetable plots at Fort Dearborn to innovative garden designs at the 1933 World's Fair.Cathy Jean Maloney has spent decades researching the city's horticultural heritage, and here she reveals the unusual history of Chicago's first gardens. Challenged by the region's swamps, clay soil, harsh winters, and fierce winds, Chicago's pioneering horticulturalists, Maloney demonstrates, found imaginative uses for hardy prairie plants. This same creative spirit thrived in the city's local fruit and vegetable markets, encouraging the growth of what would become the nation's produce hub. The vast plains that surrounded Chicago, meanwhile, inspired early landscape architects, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, and O. C. Simonds, to new heights of grandeur.Maloney does not forget the backyard gardeners: immigrants who cultivated treasured seeds and pioneers who planted native wildflowers. Maloney's vibrant depictions of Chicagoans like "Bouquet Mary," a flower peddler who built a greenhouse empire, add charming anecdotal evidence to her argument - that Chicago's garden history rivals that of New York or London and ensures its status as a world-class capital of horticultural innovation.With exquisite archival photographs, prints, and postcards, as well as field guide descriptions of living legacy gardens for today's visitors, "Chicago Gardens" will delight green thumbs from all parts of the world.

About the Author
Cathy Jean Maloney is a senior editor at Chicagoland Gardening.

Reviews
"Chicago Gardens fills an important niche for a diverse market of readers: gardening enthusiasts, landscape designers, urban historians, conservationists, and others with an interest in understanding and protecting the urban landscape of one of America's premier cities." - William H. Tishler, FASLA, professor emeritus of landscape architecture, University of Wisconsin - Madison"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226502342
Author Cathy Jean Maloney
Format Hardback
Page Count 464
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 1247g
Dimensions(mm) 26mm * 18mm * 3mm