Sept. 2, 2022, is the 40th anniversary of Ruth Rabold Day in Bowling Green. Ruth was perhaps the most accomplished female landscape designer in Kentucky history. Ruth was the wife of photographer Earl D. Rabold, who was featured in our May issue, “The Talented Mr. Rabold,” and was the great-grandmother of the author.
By R. Nicholas Rabold, Bowling Green
Ruth F. Rabold blazed the trail for professional women in the early 20th century—leaving behind an enormous legacy that touches the lives of thousands of people in Bowling Green and Warren County daily.
Although she is now best remembered for her landscape and floral design work, Rabold was not least a talent scout. Indeed, in 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, Rabold recruited architect James Maurice Ingram to build the local landmark that has become known as The Rabold House. In 1933 or ’34, she recruited landscape architect Robert Swan Sturtevant to aid her in implementing the surrounding garden, particularly employing his expertise in the arrangement of her collection of irises.
Ingram, who recently had graduated from Notre Dame University, was a newcomer who went on to design many of what are still regarded as the finest houses and buildings in south-central Kentucky. Sturtevant, however, was no upstart. He had two Harvard degrees, had trained at the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm, and was a founder of the American Iris Society.
Importantly, Sturtevant served as a professor at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture—one of the first institutions in the world to open the field of landscape architecture to women. The Rabold–Sturtevant collaboration was no coincidence.
Pleased with his assistance in her private garden, Rabold—as president of the Bowling Green Garden Club—next convinced Sturtevant to help her restore Bowling Green’s Fountain Square Park.
On land donated by Robert Moore in 1797, the park originally was laid out from 1870 to 1872 by John Cox Underwood. It was then christened “Fountain Park,” but the landscape was no professional affair. The original stone fountain deteriorated so rapidly that a new one was required in less than a decade. In 1881, the marvelous cast-iron fountain—capped by Hebe, Goddess of Youth—was installed, as well as the four cast-iron statues encircling the basin. These depict Ceres, Goddess of Grain; Pomona, Goddess of Fruit; Melpomene, Goddess of Tragedy; and Flora, Goddess of Flowers.
Unfortunately, the park again was in perilous condition by the 1920s. It was used not only as a stockyard, but also, at times, an abattoir. Rabold famously considered the condition of the park, as well as certain other landscapes in Bowling Green, a “public disgrace.”
Rabold changed that. Working under Sturtevant’s gaze, she oversaw the complete overhaul of the park’s landscape—the results including specimen magnolia, linden and ginkgo trees covering gravel paths lined with cast-iron benches brought in from Charleston, South Carolina, interspersed with flower beds filled with her favorite rubrum Japanese lilies.
While Rabold was not a formally trained landscape architect, she was a remarkable talent with a keen mind. She built her career on years of independent study throughout the United States and Europe.
Feeling that she had exhausted domestic sources of inspiration, in 1937, Rabold traveled from New York, New York, to Southampton, England, aboard the R.M.S. Queen Mary. It was a grand tour. Her diary entry from June 23, 1937, her day of departure, notes “[a]t last, the day of days has arrived … the celebration is terrific.”
Upon arrival in England, Rabold studied the Kensington Palace Gardens; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Gardens; Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s landscape garden at Blenheim Palace; and even William Shakespeare’s garden at New Place. Upon crossing the English Channel, Rabold went on to study numerous continental gardens. One, of course, was Rabold’s favorite: “Versailles is … gorgeous beyond description … [and] poignantly connected to the story of Marie Antoinette.”
Rabold’s work was of such quality that she went on to help design many Bowling Green and Warren County parks, golf courses and streetscapes—in some cases, entire neighborhoods—as well as residential landscapes across the country.
Her services were not inexpensive. On March 20, 1957, Estelle Jackson of the Louisville Courier-Journal recorded, with regard to the gardens at The Rabold House alone, “Mrs. Earl D. Rabold of Bowling Green, who laughs herself off as an amateur, has a green thumb that one professional estimated as being worth $30,000.” That would be well over $300,000 today.
Landscapes are by their nature transient, and Rabold’s broader work is now largely altered. But in south-central Kentucky, her vision has endured.
She was instrumental in the founding of the Bowling Green Beautification Commission (Operation PRIDE), which continues to oversee all major beautification projects in the region today, and the Hobson House museum—Riverview at Hobson Grove. She was one of the earliest donors to the Landmark Association of Bowling Green and Warren County and donated funds for the 1980s restoration of the Capitol Arts Center on Fountain Square.
In recognition of her “many contributions and achievements” for the city of Bowling Green, then-Mayor Harold A. Miller proclaimed Sept. 2 “Ruth Rabold Day.” A plaque at the Main Street entrance to Fountain Square Park—her most famous work—commemorates the community’s appreciation for Rabold’s nearly six decades of service. The plaque is located directly in front of the Barclay-Rabold Building and across from the Princess Theater, where her husband’s photographs laid undiscovered for nearly a century.
Rabold died in 1986, but her legacy of beauty is ever-present in Bowling Green and Warren County—most notably at Fountain Square Park and Riverview at Hobson Grove, both of which incorporate her ubiquitous mixture of wrought iron and cast iron. Her chief protégé, M. Mitchell Leichhardt, designed the gardens at the Baker Arboretum implementing many of the same design tactics he learned with Rabold at The Rabold House.
Rabold’s favorite lily, Lilium speciosum rubrum, continues to bloom in Fountain Square Park.