The Native Landscape Reader

“A Story for Ravinians” (1936)

200 May TheiLgaaRd waTTs a story for Ravinians (1936) From Ravinia: Her Charms and Destiny, by May Theilgaard Watts and Hazel Crow Ewell (Highland Park, Ill: Ravinia Garden Club, 1936; repr., Park District of Highland Park and the Highland Park Historical Society, 1980). West of Chicago lies a bungalow and cottonwood suburb with a catalpa tree, or a distorted mulberry, or a round bed of cannas, in the exact center of each front lawn. Not long ago these streets were cut through rich woods. There were red oaks, white oaks, sugar maples, and lindens above, and yellow violets, ironwood, elderberries , wood anemones below. A certain family bought a lot out there. They enjoyed the beauty of texture in the varied foliage of the forest undergrowth. “We are tired of the neat smug scenery of Rogers Park,” they said. “Here is a different beauty, —a tangled richer loveliness.” When their house was being completed they sent out laborers to clear the property. It was March. No one knew when a clump of trembling aspens followed hawthorns and viburnums and crabs on to the roaring bon-fire. These were all “underbrush” to the laborers, and they had been ordered to “Clear out the underbrush”. When this job was finished, they took the heaped-up soil excavated for the basement , and spread it neatly and firmly to the four exact corners of the property. No one knew when a lush bed of white trilliums and sweet wild phlox was forever buried alive under a blanket of stiff wet clay. Nor did anyone realize that the levelled surface raised the soil several inches around the trunks of those white oaks and hickories that had been marked for preservation, and that this soil was cutting off the air supply of the feeding root tips, so that even these trees must soon die. Abundant rich forest still lay all around the subdued lot, and birds sang. It was a beautiful place to live. Others thought so too. They came, and each one firmly corseted and manicured his own lot, before settling down to enjoy the gypsy-like charm of his surroundings. The dying forest trees were gradually replaced, mostly with cottonwoods. Presently there was no undisciplined charm a stoRy foR Ravinians 201 left to distract the inhabitants from a comparative contemplation of each other’s lawns and privet hedges. So they settled down to planting red geraniums on these rectangular graves where they had buried beauty. But last Spring the same family that had so appreciatively bought the first lot in that suburb west of Chicago—discovered Ravinia. They saw the gray rain of aspen catkins. They saw crab apples in bloom above yellow violets, and they saw new white oak leaves above white trilliums. They bought a beautiful wooded lot. Will they send laborers out to clear and level it? This little book seeks to point out to such new neighbors the things that are probably on their property, and to talk to our old neighbors about the charms of Ravinia, so that we may enjoy them together, and perhaps lend a hand toward preserving them, and even reinstating some of them. ...