From Farmland to Great Estate

From Farmland to Great Estate. . Once open farmland, the osage-orange tree hedge on the right still exists. It dates from the 1800's farming community that formed the boyhood environment of Henry Ford. Landscape designer Jens Jensen told the Fords he would transform the land back " . . . to the way it was when the Indians skied down the banks of the Rouge." By incorporating then newly-discovered principles of ecology, Jensen was able to create a tapestry of meadows and forests from soybean and corn fields which, when combined with the proximity of water, helped screen out the pressures of modern living. , , By the late 1920’s, the estate consisted of approximately 1,300 acres and included orchards and agricultural fields, seven gardens, greenhouses, servant cottages, a boathouse, a skating house, a maple sugar shack, a pony barn, and a hydroelectric powerhouse to generate electricity.