Commemorating the achievements of significant Chicago women, the Women’s Park and Garden of Chicago occupies a beautiful four acre plot surrounding the oldest house in the city--now the Clarke House Museum.  As a WBE (Women’s Business Enterprise), McKay Landscape Architects was honored to be chosen for this exciting project.

The gardens feature a central fountain and some plant species indigenous to the 1830s when the Clarke House was built. Perennials, culinary and medicinal herbs, dye and scent plants, an orchard, heirloom vegetables, and a formal rose garden fill the space with an array of colors and varieties, plants of all shapes and sizes. A curvilinear path—poured concrete with leaf forms imprinted--winds around the park leading visitors through historically appropriate theme gardens surrounding the site. Underlying this main path is a grid of geometric gravel paths which outline the lawn and gardens and lead to the central fountain garden. The layout of the gravel paths represents the structures of society while the curving path is a metaphor for women’s lives, lived sometimes within the boundaries of convention and sometimes without.  The diverse plant selection is intended to educate visitors about those species which are particularly hardy in the Chicago region.  In the near future a sculpture by artist Louise Bourgeois, honoring Jane Adams, will be relocated to the park, further celebrating the achievements of great women.