The July issue of the digital magazine, Garden Time, featured an article about the garden.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
The Elk Rock Garden at Bishop’s Close is a treasure of a botanical garden tucked into a Dunthorpe neighborhood overlooking the Willamette River. Originally the home of Peter Kerr, a native of Scotland, the state, along with an endowment for maintenance and upkeep was donated after his death by his daughters in 1957 to the Episcopal Bishop of Oregon on the condition that the garden be open to visitors. Because of this generous gift, we have the pleasure of visiting this gem of a garden year-round.
Here is a link to the whole magazine: http://www.gardentime.tv/gto/1307/GTDM-1307.pdf
I recently read the very nice July 2013 article on the Elk Grove Garden at the Bishop’s Close. It truly is a garden gem in our area. As a retired landscape architect with over 37 years practicing as a park planner, I wanted to comment on several statements in the article.
John Olmsted did not design Central Park in New York City. It was designed by his father, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. with his co-designer and senior partner, Calvert Vaux. Olmsted, Vaux and Company was Frederick Sr’s initial landscape architectural firm in New York City. The two of them co-designed many well-know urban parks in New York City and NY state, Chicago IL, Milwaukee WI, and Louisville KY.
John C. Olmsted was the nephew and adopted son of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. He was a partner in the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted Brothers., based in Brookline, Massachusetts. This was one of the successor firms to the Olmsted, Vaux, and Company. Frederick’s Sr’s. other son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., was the other partner in the firm of Olmsted Brothers. The two Olmsted sons took over the original firms when Frederick Sr. retired from practice in 1895.
Also, John Olmsted did not design Lithia Park in Ashland, OR. The development of Lithia park began in 1914 with the hiring of John McLaren (also the designer of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park) as landscape architect. Lithia Park embodies the distinctive characteristics of park design in the tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. McLaren’s landscape plan for Lithia Park was organic in layout, following the natural canyon of the water course.