More from the Garden Club of Evanston website (
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"The garden is nestled in a quiet central section of the Evanston campus, just north of Frank W. Howes Memorial Chapel at the east end of Garrett Place, and directly east of the new Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center site, the eight-bed garden is hidden from view by a double wall of hawthorn hedges.
The 70- by 100-foot plot of land was established in 1915 when it became a project of The Garden Club of Evanston members because of wartime sympathy for our British allies and to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It was a way to celebrate the ties between England and America.
The Shakespeare Garden was designed by renowned Danish-American landscape architect and conservationist Jens Jensen (1860-1951), who is credited for the Cook County Forest Preserve system and both Garfield Park and Columbus Park on Chicago’s West Side. It was one of two formal gardens that Jensen designed, the other being the Rose Garden at Fair Lane, the Henry Ford estate in Dearborn, Mich.
The flowers, shrubs, trees and herbs in the garden are mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays and are varieties best suited to the garden’s location and Midwestern climate. Among the more than 50 plants that can be planted are rosemary, lavender, thyme, hyssop, rue, lemon balm, columbine, old roses, oxeye daisy, anemone, daffodil, pansy, poppy, nasturtium and marigolds. Parsley, holly, ivy, mint and peonies are also allowed.
The Shakespeare Garden still contains many of the original hawthorns that were started from seed in France and which form the formal garden’s base. (The hawthorns of Jensen’s plan and the fact that it represents the type of project that flourished in 1916 conceived by the Drama League are the reasons the Shakespeare Garden was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.)
A fountain and an Elizabethan-style stone bench were installed in 1929. The bronze and stone fountain, designed and donated by architect Hubert Burnham, was dedicated in 1930. Burnham donated the plaque in memory of his mother, Margaret Sherman Burnham, an early Shakespeare Garden chairman and wife of internationally known Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham. The memorial fountain features a bronze relief of Shakespeare’s head fashioned by French-American sculptor Leon Hermant and quotations from the Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and The Winter’s Tale.”
The garden continues to be maintained by Garden Club of Evanston members, many of whom are Northwestern graduates. As the garden’s caretakers they periodically assess the color and the pattern to see which plants flourish and which languish.
The Shakespeare Garden, the site of many garden tours, numerous marriage proposals and hundreds of weddings or wedding photo sessions, is open from dusk to dawn to all visitors."