Special Feature — The Changing Face of Public Gardens
Bringing Nature Back:
The Field Museum’s Rice N By Heather Prince
The lakefront of Chicago has a long and
storied history of human usage and as we learn more about the impacts of landscaping on the built environment as well as wildlife populations, many of our local institutions are pivoting to embrace sustainable practices and native plantings. The Field Museum of Natural History has taken some ambitious steps toward these goals. In 1998, Lake Shore Drive was moved west of the Museum to create a park-like campus for the Field, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium. Rolling lawn, walkways, trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals were installed and Chicagoans flocked to this new green space on Lake Michigan. However, traditional landscaping required high inputs of resources like water and fertilizers. As the Field Museum re-examined its green spaces, new goals were created. To
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achieve and keep LEED Gold status and to better connect the campus to the regional Midwest landscape, the Field, in partnership with its sister museums and the Chicago Park District, launched a Landscape Masterplan. They hired site design group ltd. to develop a plan that “envisions a Field Museum property and Museum campus that participates in larger ecological systems and landscape patterns — a networking that has the potential to improve the overall ecological health of the City of Chicago’s lakefront, catalyze additional sustainable landscape design and management at the regional level, and furnish new interpretive and exhibit opportunities that will bolster the museum’s mission.” In 2017, site design group won the Illinois ASLA Honor Award for their visionary masterplan for the Field, and the Rice Native Gardens have flourished since installation. Due to complex land-leasing agreements with the
The Landscape Contractor June 2021
