Project Details Page

synopsis

Arthur Dunn hired the Olmsted firm to locate a summer cottage and develop a landscape plan for a 10-acre tract north of Seattle. Today the E. B. Dunn Historic Garden Trust welcomes visitors to this Olmsted-designed garden. With its drive winding through native conifers and eastern hardwoods and with broad sweeping lawns, this garden embodies the Olmsted philosophy of designing with nature.

Arthur Dunn hired the Olmsted firm to locate a summer cottage and develop a landscape plan for a 10-acre tract north of Seattle. Today the E. B. Dunn Historic Garden Trust welcomes visitors to this Olmsted-designed garden. With its drive winding through native conifers and eastern hardwoods and with broad sweeping lawns, this garden embodies the Olmsted philosophy of designing with nature.

While the Olmsted Brothers firm was working on public projects in Seattle, many wealthy Seattle business owners hired the well-known firm to design landscapes on their private estates. In 1914 salmon cannery owner Arthur G. Dunn and his wife Jeanette purchased ten acres of land north of Seattle, planning to create a summer home. The following year the Dunns hired the Olmsted Brothers firm to locate a cottage and develop a landscape plan to surround their future summer home. The Olmsted firm also had the commission for the neighboring John B. Agen property (job 06075) with which there would be a common entry drive.

Son Edward Dunn later developed an interest in horticulture and spent his adult years hybridizing rhododendrons and planting them and woodland wildflowers in the 2.5-acre garden he developed on the family property. Today located in the Broadview neighborhood, the Dunn Gardens are the only private Olmsted-designed gardens in Seattle open to the public on a regular basis.

The Olmsted firm’s design worked with and enhanced the existing site features, including a curvilinear drive through the native conifer forest, views of Puget Sound, and footpaths through the woods and a natural ravine along the south edge of the property. Born and raised on the east coast, Arthur Dunn loved the east coast hardwoods and asked that they be worked into the garden’s design and plant mix. A hundred years later, most of Arthur Dunn’s favorite hardwoods still create focal points and visual structure to the gardens.

Today the Olmsted landscape design is still visible. The edge of the Great Lawn follows the Olmsted plan and the deciduous trees planted by Arthur Dunn still are a main feature of the garden. The curvilinear drive and foot paths remain. Internal views and pathways, and the spatial arrangement of both native and ornamental trees, still define the Gardens to this day.

more