PIONEERS OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE DESIGN II-
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Entry for Will Carleton Curtis

Will Carelton Curtis (left) directs Howard Stiles and co-worker during the late 1930's construction of a rock garden. (New England Wild Flower Society)

By Howard Supnik

Will C. Curtis was born In 1683 in Schuylerville, New York. He worked for a local florist at the age of twelve, gaining an early interest in plants, and in 1912 graduated from Cornell University with a degree in landscape architecture. In the 1920's, he served as Office manager for Warren Manning's Billerica, Massachusetts Office, and was greatly influenced by the horticultural skills Manning (1860-1938) had acquired while employed wlth Frederlck Law Olmsted's practice. During the Depression years, Curtis worked for various nurseries setting up landscapes at garden shows. He won the Gold Medal from the New York Horticultural Society in 1935 and the Bulkeley Medal from the Garden Club of America for most outstanding horticultural and educational merit for shows in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as several other similar medals throughout his career.

Most of curtis' early projects were New England residential properties involving preservation and vernacular design traditions. For the Bette Davis Estate on sugar Hill in Franconia, New Hampshire (1942), materials from an old barn were salvaged for the construction of a new barn in the New England tradition. Curtis set the barn into the ninety-five-acre property using a minimum of intervention--and then only to create a "natural-looking" setting. He purposely avoided formal design for either nature itself or design ideas he found in nature, such as "balance without symmetry" and the use of curves instead of straight lines. In the unfinished manuscripts curtis wrote for Little Brown Publishers of Boston and Macmillan Company of New York, he stated, "All design, naturalistic or otherwise, is repetition of some object or objects, and to create pleasant pictures this repetition must be harmonious ... Rhythm is the most important single attribute in landscape design, real but elusive. It is the quality that gives life and joy, motion and repose. It is poetry and song."

Curtis' greatest accomplishment was the creation of Garden in the Woods, a thirty-acrebotanic garden in Framingham, Massachusetts (now owned by The New England Wildflower Society). In 1930 when Curtis purchased the property, characterized by mixed evergreen and deciduous woodland and the rolling topography typical to southern New England, he used it to set up an experiment - a wildflower sanctuary protecting threatened or endangered species. In the original 1934 brochure for Garden in the Woods, Curtis described it as "a Wild Flower sanctuary in which wild plants will be grown, their likes and dislikes discovered and the knowledge so gained eventually passed on in an effort to curb the wholesale destruction of our most beautiful natives. This is to be my contribution to conservation." He undertook many expeditions, including one to the top of Mt. washington, to rescue these plants. Botany classes from Harvard university and other local schools, as well as Garden Clubs, used the Garden as a botanical laboratory. The Garden was not laid out in plan, but intuitively, with garden rooms, paths and steps, and even buildings placed sympathetically in the landscape. Curtis based his designs on patterns found in nature, utilizing native plant communities to create a design which deliberately appears unaffected.

In the 1960s Curtis began to suffer from ill health, but he served for five years as an advisor to Weston, Massachusetts' twenty-two-acre Hubbard Trail, a public conservation project. At the Homer Lucas Residence, also in Weston, Curtis used similar techniques to imply that the landscape had not been modified. He even drilled out a piece of ragged ledge to plant a wild multitrunk American Linden. The client proudly boasted that there was not one blade of grass.

Until his death in 1969, Will C. curtis helped promote education and conservation through garden tours and Garden Club lectures, and by entrusting his garden to The New England Wild Flower Preservation Society. The Society continues to offer workshops and courses and to support the preservation of Curtis' experiment.

Curtis, Will C., "They are not Difficult . . .Cultivated Wild Flowers." Horticulture (January1950): 10. A technical discussion of the propagation and care of wildflowers.

Curtis, Will C., "When Wild Flowers are Tamed" Horticulture (1 April 1945): 175. A technical summary discussing how wildflowers can succeed in home gardens.

Hensel, Margaret, "The Garden in the Woods" Horticulture (May 1981): 47. The article concerns the inspirational qualities of the Garden and includes a discussion of Curtis' partner, Howard O. Stiles.

Lynch, John A., "Garden in the Woods" American Forests 76, no. 3 (March 1970): 20. One of curtis' last interviews before his death; published shortly thereafter.

Paine Barbara B., "The New England Wildflower Society Campaigns to Preserve Garden in the Woods." Horticulture (October 1964): 32-35. Details Curtis' effort to save Garden in the Woods from developers.

Stiles, Howard O., "Will C. Curtis--His Life" American Rock Garden Society Bulletin 28, no.2 (April 1970): 63. Obituary/biographical sketch by Curtis' partner.

Supnik, Howard Jay, "A Garden in the Woods" Landscape Design: Journal of the Landscape Institute, England 198 (March 1991): 15. Description and critical analysis of Curtis' landscape design methodologies.

Talcott, Richard B., "Where There is Plenty of Fun and Sometimes a Little Danger in Wild Flower Gathering." Boston Herald (28 April 1935) Stories of plant-rescue expeditions and how the rescued plants fit into built landscapes.

Vigderman, Patricia, "Landscaped Wildflower Wilderness." New York Times (20 August 1985). Interviews with the professionals who now operate the Garden in the Woods.

Woolner, Frank, "Where Nature is King" Worcester Sunday Telegram (17 January 1965): 8-9. Promotional Reporting on Garden in the Woods.

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The papers of Will C. Curtis are located at the New England Wildflower Society. Framingham, Massachusetts. Although Curtis did not produce plans, the archives are unusually rich and include an unpublished manuscript, articles, photographs and many slides.

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