Louise Klein Miller (August 7, 1854 – October 24, 1943[1]) was an American landscape architect, educator, and curator of school gardens for the Cleveland public school system.
Miller taught school in Dayton as a young woman. She taught at the
Lowthorpe School of Horticulture and Landscape Gardening for Women in Massachusetts, and designed the Lowthorpe Garden. In 1904, she became head of the
Cleveland Board of Education's Department of School Gardens.[7] The program founded eight elementary school gardens and home gardens for students.[8] While there, she designed a memorial garden to commemorate the 172 victims of a school fire in
Collinwood, Ohio in 1910.[9][10]
After she retired from the Cleveland schools in 1938,[11] she was in charge of the grounds at the Blossom Hill School for Girls in
Brecksville, Ohio.[5][12] She lectured on her work to community groups,[13][14] and wrote several books.[15]
Miller died in October 1943, at the age of 89, in Cleveland,[5][19] a few weeks after speaking at the annual meeting of the Garden Club of Ohio.[20] "She not only taught the art of raising flowers and vegetables, she helped people to overcome their quandaries," recalled an acquaintance in 1953.[21] More a century after she designed it, the Collinwood School Fire Memorial Garden remains as a monument, though it was much reduced in size when it was redesigned in the 1990s.[22][23] She is recognized as a leader in the American
school gardens movement of the
Progressive Era.[24]
References
^Birth and death date from New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors. Death date confirmed in Cornell Alumni News for November 15, 1943. Birth year confirmed in Woman's Who's Who of America (1914).