Research Garden DesignBrowse photos, get design ideas & see the hottest plants
For more than 50 age , the country ’s most archetypally Modernist garden has been hidden behind a fuddled row of arborvitae hedges along Washington Street in Columbus , Indiana , a city of 39,000 the great unwashed an hour to the south of Indianapolis .
Kiley ’s garden nearly touch the roofline of architect Eero Saarinen ’s structure , which in turn uses skylights under the eaves to mediate the transition from inside to out . photograph by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Unless you knew J. Irwin and Xenia Miller , the wealthy artistry collectors who commissioned it , or were granted rarified license to put down , you have missed what landscape gardening pioneer Daniel Urban Kiley ( 1912 - 2004 ) considered his best work . His 1955 design for the Miller House ground was a series of what he call “ pinwheeling spaces ” that spun outward from a dwelling plan by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen . Though Kiley get together with Saarinen on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and other iconic twentieth - century structures , it was at Miller House that the Modernist era in landscape painting design was born .
In May , the Miller home open up to the world for the first time . For a $ 20 entry fee , design pilgrims can see how Kiley synthesized the classical 17th - century French designs of his hero André Le Nôtre with the abstraction of minimalist designer Mies van der Rohe , especially Mies ’s acclaimed Barcelona Pavilion .
The 13 - and - a - half - Accho property has an orchard , a lawn , paths , and allées — a standard list of features — but Kiley ’s asymmetrical arrangement of them demonstrates his pastime in , as Kiley put it , “ the rendering of various Greco-Roman elements into a modern spacial sensibility . ”
A weeping beech bows gracefully over the looking glass - and - blade partition Saarinen used to screen the laundry yard from view . Kiley engraft on both sides of it to create haunting silhouettes that would be visible through the semitransparent bodily structure . Photo by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Saarinen ’s design places four orthogonal wings around an undetermined core that contains a sunken living room , an arrangement Kiley made his start item . “ What make it so mod is that Dan took line that emanated from the firm ; he did n’t take clues from the landscape , ” says Chicago landscape designer Peter Schaudt . “ His body of work grows from the computer architecture . ” The garden itself has a potent architectural structure . “ He break away with pattern by using hedging more like you would expend partition in an open program , ” says Gary Hilderbrand , who learn at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has written on Kiley ’s work .
A Boston aborigine who canvass at ( but did n’t graduate from ) Harvard , Kiley found inspiration for the Miller garden on his airplane flights to and from Columbus . The Yankee was fascinated by the perfect squares of Midwestern farmland he saw below , and those geometries constitute their way into the Miller garden , particularly the original checkerboard plantings of wildflowers .
The most often snap component of the Miller garden is its grand allée of dearest locusts , a signature element of Le Nôtre ’s Palace of Versailles . But rather of terminate the boulevard at the front door , Kiley place the allée parallel to the theatre ’s west façade , so the Millers looked through the melodic phrase of trees instead of down it . “ I do n’t know where else I ’ve seen that , ” pronounce Hilderbrand . “ He took the convening of landscape and twisted them just so . ” ( As with any bully excogitation , the twist had a practical function : The trees protect the menage from sun and wind . )
The geometry of Kiley ’s pattern drew from the patchwork quilt of farmland the New Englander saw from the air as he fly to the Miller House site . Here , a checker board of plantings mixes with a shopping center studded with Equus caballus chestnut trees . Photo by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Saarinen ’s unnoticeable line , glass walls , and fanlight under the eaves soften the transition from star sign to outdoors , and Kiley , who wrote that foil was a guide precept for the Miller project , followed lawsuit . “ He squeeze the landscape painting right up against the planetary house , so you feel there ’s no bound between you and the outside , ” says Hilderbrand . An English common ivy “ moat ” brings nature nearly to the façade .
Kiley never sacrificed pure pleasure to abstract theory . “ When you ’re in the house , there ’s scarcely a spot where you do n’t have a spectacular view into the landscape painting , ” says Mark Zelonis , manager of historic preservation for the Indianapolis Museum of Art . The master bedroom count into a crab apple woodlet on the northward side . An apple orchard that provided fruit for Mrs. Miller ’s Proto-Indo European has a clearing in the middle where the Millers could sit and appreciate their trees .
Some of Kiley ’s original plan has been changed over the years , and the museum has no prompt plans to restore it . But many element of Kiley ’s vision continue , including the tears beech tree that overhang the house and the magnolia whose pink flower contrast utterly with the gray slate panel of the house ’s façade in spring . “ Horticulturally , the species are very well chosen , ” says Kiley expert Marc Treib , emeritus prof of architecture at the University of California , Berkeley . ( One exception : The Equus caballus chestnut Tree along the private road do n’t like the scorch summers . ) The Glenn Miller also merit credit for maintaining Kiley ’s work — nature tends to fight back his rigid geometry . “ Modern gardens be given to drop very promptly , ” says Treib .
Kiley complete grand of project , let in landscape painting at I. M. Pei ’s East Wing for the National Gallery of Art and New York ’s Lincoln Center . Miller House , his first finish major garden , has best stood the test of time . Says Zelonis , “ He remove a home run his first sentence out . ”
Ted Loos covers art , designing , and architecture forThe New York Times , Vogue , and others . He is also a vino columnist for Epicurious.com .
travel to the Miller House & Garden :
For more selective information on The Miller House and Garden Tours : https://columbus.in.us / miller - house - and - garden - tour/
The Miller House and Garden is owned and cared for by the Indianapolis Museum of Art . Tours at Miller House and Garden are made potential through the Columbus Area Visitors Center .
