A Look at Lilacia Park - Jens Jensen
/Winding Paths & Council Circles
Lilacia Park Bench, photograph, c.1940s
When wandering Lilacia Park, you may have sat on a low limestone wall to enjoy the view and the surrounding scents. Perhaps you looked at this funny curving wall, or as a kid, walked along the broad stone seat pretending to be a tightrope walker in a circus. What you discovered is a council ring, a signature element in gardens designed by Jens Jensen.
These rings, or sometimes half-circles, were scattered throughout the gardens he created so that visitors would enjoy the view or find a quiet place to chat with a friend.
The photograph to the left, and the video with Alison Costanzo, LHS Executive Director, shows one of the council rings at Lilacia Park, which is not really ring-like but instead is a curving structure. Jensen saw council rings as uniquely American, with no defined head of the table, but a place for people to meet as equals. When friends meet at the council ring, there is no hierarchy, and so ideas and stories can be shared equally.
Jensen also believed that since nature has no straight lines, a curving bench flows with the design as opposed to a traditional bench. In an undated letter to Stanley White, a professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Illinois, Jensen wrote:
Flagstone path at Lilacia Park,
photograph, c. 1940s
I think it would be well to say this much about the straight line, that it is cold and uncompromising. A curved line is poetic - it is romantic - it is mysterious and is a part of our life.
He goes on to explain the difference between a snakey line versus a curved line and ends by saying If a straight line is the fitting thing, use it, and I will not make a curve for the sake of making it.
The council ring then becomes part of the Midwestern landscape, a low slung element where the earth and sky meet. If you wander through Lilacia Park when the lilacs are in full bloom, the paths you travel are never truly straight but instead have slight curves. A council ring becomes a destination for the wanderer, a spot where a visitor can enjoy solitude or a couple of visitors can have a quiet conversation without being on view to other wanderers.
Jens Jensen was influenced by the prairies and driven by a philosophical belief that parks are a humanizing element in crowded urban areas. Lilacia Park is one of Jensen’s smallest designs and contains, to this day, many of Jensen’s signature elements.
Written By: Jean Crockett, Lombard Historical Society Archivist
Blue Prints, The Planting Plan for The Lombard Community Garden & Library (Lilacia Park), Jens Jensen,
c. 1929.
