The Garden Club of America Funds Research on the Shaping of the American Landscape

GCA Moore Fellow Investigates Landscape Architecture’s Impact

December 11, 2024

Eric Schwartz, 2024 Moore Family Fellow in the Making of the American Landscape, explored the legacy of the New Deal-era Prairie States Forestry Project (PSFP).  He explains, “In planting 200 million trees down the middle of the country, the New Deal-era Prairie States Forestry Project was a radical gambit to rebuild Middle-America from the roots-up in the wake of the catastrophe of the Dust Bowl.” 

Focusing on Nebraska, Schwartz interviewed a variety of sources. From experts at the National Agroforestry Center in Lincoln, to the stewards of small, county-specific historical societies, Schwartz observed, “these conversations described the relationships between people, plants, and place; and the intimate acts of American ritual that bond them.” He spoke as well to “a cross-section of the public about their place-based lived experiences.” 

GCA funding allowed Schwartz to visit Bessey Nursery in the Nebraska National Forest, the historic headquarters of the PSFP and the country’s largest hand-planted forest.   The Bessey Nursery, Schwartz explains, “stands as a radical departure from the surrounding rolling prairie. Both a place of recreation and sapling production, Bessey’s operations generate plant material for 15 national forests across seven Middle West states.”

“The GCA scholarship made possible an invaluable period of travel-based research, while connecting me to people, places, and experiences that, like a deep well, will be a generative resource for the long-term.”

Schwartz recently earned a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Applications for the GCA’s 29 merit scholarships are available on the GCA website:  https://www.gcamerica.org/scholarships.