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

By: Sid Hancock

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.