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For more than 50 years , the country ’s most archetypally Modernist garden has been hidden behind a tight row of arborvitae hedges along Washington Street in Columbus , Indiana , a city of 39,000 people an hour in the south of Indianapolis .
Kiley ’s garden nearly meet the roofline of architect Eero Saarinen ’s social structure , which in turn uses skylights under the eaves to intermediate the transition from at bottom to out . picture by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Unless you knew J. Irwin and Xenia Miller , the moneyed artistic production collectors who commissioned it , or were cede rare permit to enroll , you have missed what landscape gardening pioneer Daniel Urban Kiley ( 1912 - 2004 ) reckon his effective work . His 1955 design for the Miller House grounds was a series of what he call “ pinwheeling space ” that spun outward from a home designed by Finnish designer Eero Saarinen . Though Kiley collaborated with Saarinen on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and other iconic twentieth - century structures , it was at Miller House that the Modernist epoch in landscape design was suffer .
In May , the Miller base opens to the world for the first sentence . For a $ 20 entryway fee , figure pilgrims can see how Kiley synthesized the classical seventeenth - 100 French designs of his hero André Le Nôtre with the abstract of minimalist architect Mies van der Rohe , specially Mies ’s acclaimed Barcelona Pavilion .
The 13 - and - a - half - acre property has an orchard , a lawn , track , and allées — a received list of features — but Kiley ’s crooked arrangement of them prove his interest in , as Kiley put it , “ the interlingual rendition of various classic elements into a New spatial aesthesia . ”
A weeping beech bows gracefully over the glass - and - steel partition Saarinen used to shield the laundry yard from view . Kiley engraft on both sides of it to produce haunting silhouettes that would be visible through the semitransparent structure . Photo by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Saarinen ’s intention places four rectangular flank around an open gist that take a sunken living way , an system Kiley made his starting point . “ What defecate it so modern is that Dan took lines that emanated from the star sign ; he did n’t take clues from the landscape , ” says Chicago landscape architect Peter Schaudt . “ His work grows from the computer architecture . ” The garden itself has a strong architectural structure . “ He violate with convention by using hedgerow more like you would use segmentation in an open program , ” says Gary Hilderbrand , who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has written on Kiley ’s piece of work .
A Boston native who learn at ( but did n’t graduate from ) Harvard , Kiley found breathing in for the Miller garden on his aeroplane flights to and from Columbus . The Yankee was fascinated by the perfect squares of Midwestern farmland he get word below , and those geometries establish their way into the Miller garden , peculiarly the original checker board plantings of wildflower .
The most often photographed factor of the Miller garden is its opulent allée of dearest locusts , a signature element of Le Nôtre ’s Palace of Versailles . But instead of end the avenue at the front door , Kiley placed the allée parallel to the firm ’s Mae West façade , so the Millers await through the line of tree instead of down it . “ I do n’t know where else I ’ve get a line that , ” says Hilderbrand . “ He took the convention of landscape and twisted them just so . ” ( As with any great design , the twist had a practical use : The trees protect the house from sun and wind . )
The geometry of Kiley ’s design drew from the patchwork of farmland the New Englander saw from the atmosphere as he flew to the Miller House land site . Here , a checkerboard of planting mix with a plaza studded with horse chestnut tree . pic by : Hadley Fruits / Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art .
Saarinen ’s unobtrusive lines , looking glass paries , and skylight under the eaves mince the passage from house to out of doors , and Kiley , who wrote that transparence was a guiding principle for the Miller project , followed suit . “ He pressed the landscape painting right on up against the house , so you sense there ’s no boundary between you and the exterior , ” says Hilderbrand . An English English ivy “ fosse ” brings nature nearly to the façade .
Kiley never sacrificed sodding delight to abstract theories . “ When you ’re in the house , there ’s just a billet where you do n’t have a prominent view into the landscape , ” sound out Mark Zelonis , director of historic conservation for the Indianapolis Museum of Art . The master bedroom seem into a crab apple grove on the north side . An Malus pumila plantation that provided fruit for Mrs. Miller ’s pies has a clearing in the middle where the Millers could sit and treasure their tree .
Some of Kiley ’s original plan has been changed over the years , and the museum has no contiguous plans to mend it . But many factor of Kiley ’s visual sense remain , including the tears beechwood that overhang the house and the magnolias whose pinkish blossoms contrast perfectly with the white-haired ticket panels of the house ’s façade in spring . “ Horticulturally , the species are very well chosen , ” says Kiley expert Marc Treib , emeritus prof of architecture at the University of California , Berkeley . ( One exclusion : The horse chestnut tree along the driveway do n’t like the scorching summers . ) The Millers also deserve credit for maintaining Kiley ’s study — nature tend to fight his strict geometry . “ Modern gardens tend to deteriorate very quickly , ” says Treib .
Kiley completed thousand of project , include landscapes at I. M. Pei ’s East Wing for the National Gallery of Art and New York ’s Lincoln Center . Miller House , his first fill out major garden , has best endure the test of time . Says Zelonis , “ He hit a home run his first time out . ”
Ted Loos covers art , design , and computer architecture forThe New York Times , Vogue , and others . He is also a wine columnist for Epicurious.com .
travel to the Miller House & Garden :
For more information on The Miller House and Garden enlistment : https://columbus.in.us / miller - house - and - garden - tour/
The Miller House and Garden is owned and cared for by the Indianapolis Museum of Art . tour at Miller House and Garden are made possible through the Columbus Area Visitors Center .
