Jens Jensen, Native Plants, and the Concept of Nordic Superiority

Abstract

The writings of German landscape architecture historians Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Gert Gröening have brought into question the ethical underpinnings of natural landscaping. Citing the work of Willy Lange, a German “garden architect” whose work foreshadowed and became the foundation for designs by Alwin Seifert and other National Socialist landscape engineers and planners, they develop a critique which suggests that the preservation of native landscapes and the exclusive use of native plants in gardens is both “racist” and “anti-human.” Wolschke-Bulmahn has also criticized Jens Jensen, the Midwest American landscape architect who is well known for his advocacy and use of native plants during the first four decades of the twentieth century. This critique is made by highlighting excerpts of Jensen's writings in German landscape journals of the 1930s, which Wolschke-Bulmahn believes show Jensen's support for the racial policies of the National Socialist Party.

This paper attempts to answer this critique against Jensen and against the contemporary use of native plants. We review Jensen's life from his birth in Dybbol, Denmark to his death in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, looking at the personal and social influences that made him an advocate of democracy and the use of native plants. We describe Jensen as a man, like many of his generation, with racist tendencies, but one who was not sympathetic to the National Socialist (or American, or British) program of euthanasia. Instead, we view him as a person struggling with the way “progress” had outstripped the ritual and spiritual aspects of life in the “modern” world. Jensen realized that natural places and the use of native plants represented, not a superiority over others, but a way to help everyone, especially immigrants, establish a relationship with their new home. Furthermore, we argue that today's use of native plants and the emphasis on “place” are part of this thought: an attempt to diversify and humanize, in a positive way, a post-modern world that has become increasingly homogenized and artificial.