Fair Lane Gardens - garden at the Dearborn, Michigan estate of Henry Ford

Flower & Garden Magazine, Oct-Nov, 1993 by Ellen Henke

It Took A Dane By The Name Of Jens Jensen to create what is today praised as a totally American-inspired garden. In Detroit during the early 1900s, other landscape architects were building American estate gardens that were imitations of classical European themes. But Jensen created an estate for the Henry Ford family that evoked the surrounding landscape of the plains and prairies of North America.

Exploring Fair Lane, the Henry Ford estate in Dearborn, Michigan, one experiences how Jensen preserved a sense of America's heartland by using a wide range of indigenous trees and shrubs. Jensen planted oaks, maples, hawthorns, dogwoods and redbuds in informal groupings. These native trees continue to be some of the best choices for our home landscapes.

Jensen's special landscape signature is visible in the low contours of the land, which repeat those of the plains. Extensive use of hawthorn trees with horizontal branches imitates the lines of the prairie; dramatic waterfalls and rockwork conjure images of the bluffs and ravines along the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan.

It is said that Jensen secured his commission by actually opposing Ford's desire to have a boxcar of Scotch pine seedlings planted. Evidently, Ford respected Jensen's decision against introducing nonnative species, especially evergreens, into the Midwestern landscape.

Ford and Jensen worked together closely for six years to create the 1,210-acre landscape at Fair Lane, named after the road on which Ford's father William was born in County Cork, Ireland. The relationship between these two men was stormy; Jensen quit the commission several times due to disagreements with Ford on many issues, not the least of which was plant selection. To Jensen, the money he earned from this lucrative commission was not nearly as important as the freedom to apply his philosophy to the development of American landscape gardens.

Jensen stopped working on Fair Lane in 1920 following a colossal argument with Clara Ford. Thereafter Mrs. Ford supervised the landscaping in collaboration with several other landscape architects. Many formal gardens were installed, all of them imitating the classical gardens of Europe, which Jensen despised. Nevertheless, Jensen's "presence" pervades the site even today.

In 1977 Fair Lane was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. Today the Scottish baronial mansion and 72 acres of the original estate are preserved by the University of Michigan Dearborn Center as part of its campus development plan and are open to the public.

Ford's fortune was made on the international success of his Model T, the first mass-produced automobile in the world. Fair Lane provided a safe refuge from the curious public and also allowed him to develop a lifestyle in harmony with the Midwestern landscape and its traditions.

Fair Lane was Ford's private laboratory where his inventive genius was free to create. A six-level powerhouse, a collaboration between Ford and his friend Thomas Edison, is still intact with the original machinery that produced Fair Lane's electricity, heat and even ice. The estate also included a hand-dug well, orchards, vegetable gardens, a greenhouse and thousands of acres of farm land. The produce was preserved in a root cellar, a remnant of the farms that existed on the site from 1830.

Self-guided walking tours give visitors a look at the mansion and surrounding gardens. One walking trail follows the Rouge River where Ford and another of his friends, American naturalist John Burroughs, observed birds, deer and other wildlife.

The cascade and riverscape here, another of Jensen's designs, is one of the most popular features on the grounds, drawing visitors in by the sound of water rushing over the rocks. Jensen constructed the cascade to emulate a Midwestern waterfall landscape. The dam, which provides water to power turbines in the powerhouse, and the rockwork along the river are constructed of Ohio limestone.

Another path follows Ford's favorite walk through the Great Meadow to the pond secreted in the woods where family members ice skated in winter. Ford loved to walk in the Great Meadow (called the "Path of the Setting Sun" by Jensen and "Jensen's Meadow" by others) on the eastern side of the house. Jensen developed this pastoral scene out of an area of open farm land. After Jensen's departure, Ford insisted on conserving the meadow in its original design. A purple martin house on the east side of the Great Meadow demonstrates Ford's fondness for wildlife. An avid bird watcher and naturalist, Ford used his political power to lobby in favor of the landmark Bird Migration Act of 1913. At Fair Lane, Ford provided food, water and nesting supplies for birds and bats, which were imperative to the success of his mosquito control program.

Jensen was especially sensitive to the paths of the sun as well as the contrasts of sun and shade in his meadow gardens. He believed that viewing the sunrise and sunset put people in touch with the cycles of nature. Some historians suggest that because Jensen came from the gray, overcast environment of Denmark, he may have been particularly impressed with the brilliance of the Midwestern sun and the dramatic variation in light quality at different times of the year. As Jensen himself noted, "Light and shadow and their distribution during the entire circle of the day and night are important fundamentals in the art of landscaping."