“Let every street be made a reverent
aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is
unchained.”
— Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, “On the
Building of Springfield”
Vachel Lindsay would be pleased with the town
Springfield is becoming. If Lincoln is our first son, who placed us
on the map with words and deeds of universal wisdom, then Lindsay,
the visionary poet of the Springfield that could be, is surely our
second son. He spoke to the “the soul of the city.”
In our tribute to Lincoln’s Springfield,
we’re finally beginning to build Lindsay’s Springfield.
If, as Lindsay’s poem suggests, “Abraham Lincoln walks
at midnight,” then Vachel Lindsay has cast his spell over the
heart of our town.
Block by block, from the Hoogland Center for
the Arts to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum,
the city is coming to life with “old market” shops,
sidewalk eateries, and potted plants and trees. Fifth Street offers
restaurants and bars for added night attractions. And the Old State
Capitol Plaza folks — Prairie Archives, Robbie’s, the
Feed Store, and Carolyn Oxtoby — have been keeping the faith
for years, waiting for the rest of us to join them.
Now, Second and Capitol beckons. Buildings
that convey our city’s dignity and importance wait for the
R/UDAT (Regional Urban Design Assistance Team) plans to be implemented,
creating a vista to complement the view.
Then there’s the rest of Springfield
— that’s us, individual homeowners and landholders.
Here’s where Springfield’s “Yard to Yard
Challenge” comes into play.
Like most of us, I’ve put my gardening
efforts into building an oasis in my own back yard because
that’s where I while away the summer days. But it’s a
secret garden, hidden from view except for invited guests. As we
invite guests into our town, we should also extend our hospitality
to our front yards, creating welcoming views of cared-for homes and
gardens and, in doing so, creating a quality of life to be admired
and enjoyed by visitors and residents alike. So though I
won’t be an official contestant, I’m taking up the
“Yard to Yard Challenge.”
My street on Springfield’s near west
side offers examples of all types of 1920s bungalows — small
homes on small lots lined with old trees, ripe for enhancement with
natural beauty. I actually began revamping my front yard a few
years ago when I ripped out some old yews that seemed to act as a barrier to my
home. I’ve been working on a concept — a semicontrolled
Zen-woodland-Craftsman-style thing — something similar to the
feeling of a William Morris fabric. I generally like plants that spread
and self-sow; I like to see where they want to go, then edit them out,
here and there, as it suits me. This year, it’s starting to
happen: In the relatively small area I’ve planted so far, the
houttuynia are starting to grow through the woodland vinca. I’ve
added ferns for more lushness and red impatiens for color, and I keep
hoping that the maiden grass will grow in the deep shade (though I know
I’m fighting nature on this one).
All gardens take patience, and, as with
interior decorating, sometimes it’s best to live with a
garden for a while until it tells you what it wants to be. My front
yard has finally spoken: It dreams of the woods but is quite happy
living in Lindsay’s Springfield. Now that I know, I’ll
keep working toward the street, extending a welcome to all
passersby.
Over the past few years, my neighbors have
begun gardening their front yards, too — yards abundant with
hostas and pretty little cottages with gardens reminiscent of fairy
tales. I think of streets nearby — Walnut with its stately
homes and MacArthur, which many residents and visitors must travel
each day. Imagine each street lined with gardens in which
“beauty is unchained.” (Granted, in the case of South
MacArthur, this requires a real stretch of the imagination, but
with a tasteful new development at the site of the old Esquire
Theatre, hope remains alive.)
Gardens, like towns, should always be works in
progress. As we begin to take pride in our homes, large and small,
as we begin to plant so “every street be made a reverent
aisle,” something much larger begins to happen. We,
individually and collectively, begin to build Springfield anew.
Each of us — like Lincoln and Lindsay, participants in our
town and in nature — creating, choosing the world we live in,
block by block, yard to yard.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2005.
