“The excellent becomes the permanent.”
Jane Addams
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Jens Jensen, lauded by the New York Times as “the dean of landscape architecture” cultivated an authentic set of values rooted in the idea that we all share a natural heritage together.
Some of Jensen’s contemporaries from the Prairie School era included Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Dwight H. Perkins, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, who all shared a vision for organic design–working with natural materials, rockwork and plants. May T. Watts, Alfred Caldwell, Carl Sandburg and Jane Addams were among his cherished friends, who all appear in Prairie Prose.
The Prairie Prose Cooperative Game Series includes:
Prairie Prose - Tea House Edition
Related Games:
golden sunflowers
singing prairie voices hear
glistening magic
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A creative, social experience that gives players voice through poetry. Imaginative, whimsical, and playfully fun!
Prairie Prose is simple to play for players of all ages who are able to read and count. Players create their poems with themed words from Prairie School writings by Jens Jensen and his peers. Inscribed on hand-cut paper petals and gingko leaves, words inspired by nature are scattered across a hand-painted muslin play mat that features an imagined council ring with prairie wildflowers.
The bespoke gameset includes: instructions, an assortment of poetry petals, bonus petals and gingko leaf messages, hand-painted wildflower muslin play mat & drawstring storage sack, blank poetry booklet, and references.
The Prairie Fairies cooperative game experience was made in appreciation for everyone who makes our clothes and draws inspiration from children’s stories, including ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker,’ Louisa May Alcott’s Flower Fables and Jen’s Jensen’s dramatic masques that were performed long ago in the Midwest to protect endangered native landscapes like the Indiana Dunes. May T. Watts wrote in a short story called ‘Dune Magic’: “I knew there were fairies in Duneland . . . I saw one.”
“There will never be any peace on this earth until we all learn to live, work and think together.”
Jens Jensen
Siftings
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Moved by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Jensen wrote about nature in a book called Siftings. He was an early conservationist who co-organized theatrical performances, fairy festivals and pageants to save endangered landscapes, including the Indiana Dunes. The spirit of Jensen’s life and work makes him a timeless hero for all generations to be inspired by and learn from.
*Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are featured in the Quills! Concord II Edition: Heroes & Heroines cooperative game set.
Players gather elements to harvest organic vegetables and flowers in Harvest Dreams while enjoying tea on location at a local treasure–All Chocolate Kitchen in Geneva, Illinois.
Harvest Dreams is a playful, farm–to–table cooperative game experience where players harvest heirloom flowers, and organic fruits and vegetables together with the help of the honeybees. Co-op players enjoy the Deluxe Edition, featuring an organic, nuno felted harvest sunset playmat.
“A ring speaks of strength and friendship and is one of the great symbols of mankind. The fire in the center portrays the beginning of civilization, and it was around the fire our forefathers gathered when they first placed foot on this continent.”
Jens Jensen
Siftings
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
William Shakespeare
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An historic project that celebrated Jensen’s love of storytelling included the Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University. Founded in 1915 by the Garden Club of Evanston to honor William Shakespeare in which flowers, herbs and other plants mentioned in his plays that were also native to the Evanston area were included in his formal design.
Poetic quotes by the bard that are featured in the garden appear in the Prairie Prose game, which can also be paired with the dramatic Quills! Elizabethan Edition I & II.
"Every blade of grass is a study.”
Abraham Lincoln
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As a gift to fellow Americans, Jensen designed the Lincoln Memorial Garden with eight council rings in Springfield, the capitol city of Illinois, where he invited girl and boy scouts to plant acorns, which have blossomed into trees that continue to honor President Lincoln today. The council ring is a design motif and inspiration for the gameplay in the Prairie Prose Cooperative Game Series. Throughout the Memorial Garden, there are rustic park benches with inspiring quotes from President Lincoln.
Jens Jensen inaugurated the first ‘American Garden’ in Chicago with his plantings of native plants to the city and created the first modern glass house in the country with his design of the Garfield Park Conservatory. He also organized ‘The Pageant of the Year and Play Festival’ in Garfield Park (1915), that exemplifies the outdoor festivities he often orchestrated to raise social awareness to preserve the natural environment.
About 1,400 costumed children and adults came together to tell the story of the changing seasons of the year, enjoyed by an outdoor audience of 25,000+ which inspired the creation of the Prairie Fairies cooperative game experience.