Adolph Strauch (August 30, 1822 – April 25, 1883) was a Prussian American landscape architect who conceived the "landscape lawn" design. He applied his thinking to the layout of Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, which won him international acclaim. Strauch also advised and helped design several other parks and cemeteries, and laid out Eden Park, Burnet Woods, and Lincoln Park in Cincinnati.
Strauch was born August 30, 1822, in the town of Eckersdorf in Lower Silesia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. His father managed Schloss Eckersdorf, the estate of Count Anthony Alexander von Magnis, and Strauch grew up on the estate. Adolph attended the local high school, where he studied botany.
In 1838, Count Magnis obtained an apprenticeship for the young Strauch at the Imperial Gardens at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. He studied landscaping and gardening under Prince Herman von Pückler-Muskau, The prince was highly regarded for his work on Muskau Park, the family estate in Upper Lusatia, and had published a well-regarded book on landscaping, Hints on Landscape Gardening.
Schönbrunn Palace had formal, geometric gardens rivaling the gardens of Versailles. Pückler-Muskau, however, was much more interested in the Picturesque landscape theories of Sir Humphry Repton and John Nash. Strauch apprenticed under the prince for six years.
At the prince's urging, Strauch left Vienna in January 1845 and traveled through Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgium, studying the landscaping of estates and gardens. He carried letters of reference from the prince, which allowed him to not only study landscape design but the gardening operations of these establishments. He spent longer periods at large estates in Berlin, Hamburg, The Hague, and Amsterdam. At the beginning of 1846, Strauch spent three months working for Belgian horticulturist Louis van Houtte at his vast nursery near Ghent.
Leaving Ghent, Strauch moved to Paris, France. He worked as a gardener there, and studied the great gardens of the city and surrounding area. Several times he visited Père Lachaise Cemetery, which at that time was one of the very few garden cemeteries in Europe.
The French Revolution of 1848 broke out in February of that year, and soon much of Europe was engulfed in the Revolutions of 1848. A supporter of German unification and democracy, it was unsafe for Strauch to return to Germany, so he relocated to London, England, where he began working for the Royal Botanic Society at Regent's Park.
When the Great Exhibition opened in Hyde Park on May 1, 1851, Strauch — who could speak German, English, French, Polish, and Czech — found work there as a guide for distinguished visitors. When wealthy Cincinnati dry goods merchant Robert Bonner Bowler visited the Great Exhibition, he had trouble gaining entry. Strauch spotted him and helped him win admittance. Grateful for Strauch's help and impressed with how polite he was, Bowler invited him to visit Cincinnati should he ever find himself in the United States.
There was extensive press coverage of Texas and the American Southwest at the time in British newspapers, and many people were enthralled by what was described as a near-paradise. The Great Exhibition closed on October 15, 1851, and Strauch did not want to return to Regent's Park. Anatoly Demidov, Prince of San Donato, had asked Strauch to take charge of the grounds at Villa San Donato in Florence, Italy. Strauch turned him down.
Strauch sailed to the United States, arriving in Galveston, Texas, on November 5, 1851. He intended to earn his way across America by writing newspaper articles for publication in Britain and Germany. Strauch was disappointed to find the Texas shore to be mostly marshes, and he disliked the hot, humid inland climate. Strauch decided to make the trek west to San Antonio. He intended to proceed northwest into the New Mexico Territory, but discovered that the Comanche in the area were extremely unfriendly to visitors and that he would need an armed force to accompany him.
After spending the winter among German expatriates in San Antonio and nearby towns, Strauch decided to return to Britain. In the late spring of 1852, however, he learned that a member of the wealthy Cushing family of Boston, Massachusetts, was looking for a new head landscape gardener. The position appealed to him, as Boston's parks and gardens were much talked about in horticultural circles.
Intending to see more of the United States, Strauch took a steamer from New Orleans, Louisiana, up the Mississippi River to Cincinnati. He intended to catch a train at Cincinnati that would take him through Ohio and along the St. Lawrence River to Niagara Falls and then east to Boston. His steamer was slow to arrive in Cincinnati, however, and he missed his train.
Stuck in Cincinnati overnight, Strauch decided to seek out Robert Bowler. Strauch discovered that Cincinnati had a flourishing horticultural community: It was home to important journal The Western Horticultural Review, the Ernst family owned the immense Spring Garden nursery, and Bowler turned out to be strongly interested in promoting landscape gardening and horticulture. The city also had a well-established German-American community.
Bowler asked Strauch to become head gardener at his Mount Storm estate. Strauch agreed, and stayed for the next two years.
Having read and been deeply impressed by the first three volumes of Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, The estate's landscaping design and plantings were incomplete, and Strauch began to implement his ideas for a "lawn landscape system" at Mount Storm. He already had well-defined ideas for what landscape design should encompass: Space unified by panoramas and vistas; no enclosures, hedges, or fences; small lakes; well-placed statuary framed by suitable trees; lawns and flowers; and tasteful service buildings.
His work for Bowler earned him much local notice, and he was also hired to landscape Henry Probasco's Oakwood, George K. Schoenberger's Scarlet Oaks, William Neff's The Windings, the Robert Buchanan House, and the William Resor House. All these designs were in the English landscape garden tradition.
After leaving Mount Storm, Strauch toured the U.S. and Canada, observing the landscape and native plants.
After his return to Cincinnati, Strauch was hired by the trustees of Spring Grove Cemetery on October 8, 1854, to be their head gardener.