Genius of Wright, Olmsted, Jensen make home a slice of heaven

What's it like living in a landmark, the type that people from around the world come to gawk at?

Cozy, says Cathy Jean Maloney.

Her home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, America's most famous architect, on an estate landscaped by noted landscape architect Jens Jensen in Riverside, a town laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, celebrated urban planning pioneer.

"The whole deal with this house and garden is the melding of Olmsted, Wright and Jensen," said Maloney.

While Maloney's home has pedigree and cachet, it is not grand. It's the gardener's cottage on the Coonley Estate, and after a 1950s expansion is about 1,100 square feet.

"My husband says you really have to like each other to live here. But it works for a small family," said Maloney. She and her husband, Mike, have a teenage son, Tom.

Living in the cottage and in Riverside itself is all about the views, as she explains in her book, "The Gardener's Cottage" ($32.50, The Center for American Places).

And for this she credits Olmsted. The lot is small, but her sightlines include his trademark triangle of greenery in the middle of the street, other buildings that were part of the estate and a peek of the Des Plaines River.

Wright and Jensen designed the estate for Avery and Queene Coonley in 1907.

The gardener's cottage is very simple, but Maloney finds that elegant. The visitor might admire Wright's leaded windows showing touches of art glass and the living room with a fireplace of ocher brick and a tented or pyramid ceiling. The rooms are nice sized. The front bedroom now used as an office is almost 12 feet square. And a previous owner added a room by enclosing the front porch.

Even preservationists like Maloney probably bless the earlier owner who expanded the cottage with a master suite and a garage in the 1950s before the 1970 landmark status regulated such exterior changes.

The Maloneys, who have owned the home six years, added more living space by building a family room in the basement - itself a rare feature in a Wright house.

"Wright said the details were to be the same as the main estate," said Maloney. "Everything ties together from the clay roof to the cedar banding. The materials might be stepped down. Here they used pine and fir and just three little squares of color in the leaded windows. The main estate has lots and lots of dramatic colored glass."

A potential problem for the gardener arose because the architect thought curtains or drapes interfered with his desire to bring the outdoors in. That was fine for the main house where the bedrooms and private areas are on the second floor. But the gardener's bedroom was 10 feet from the street in a single-level house. Maloney has found photos that show shades were made with cutouts that mimic the stained glass squares in the windows.

In the hearth or living room Maloney feels the lifestyle of Archibald and Susan Gill, the gardener and his wife.

"I can't help but sit here and think, 'That's the view you had when this was built a century ago,'" she said. "They looked over at the other parts of the estate just like we do. The gardener and his wife, sitting here at the end of the day."

But how did the Maloneys talk themselves into moving from the Riverside house they had just bought to such a small - albeit distinguished - cottage.

"We own a cabin in Michigan that's way tinier than this," she said. "It dawned on us we just don't need all the space. I had tablecloth after tablecloth. For us it's about the views."

So their method was to get rid of items and furniture unless they have sentimental value or were purchased especially to fit this house.

And as promised in the real estate blurbs that drew the Maloneys in, the home seems larger than it is.

"Tom might be in the office and Mike in the bedroom. We're not bumping into each other," she said.

Outside the garden of mostly native plants - heavily influenced by Jensen - has won Maloney's devotion.

"He preferred a naturalistic style that emulated nature. And he celebrated the Midwest landscape, the flat prairie. The tall grass prairie reminded him of the sea."

Thus trees and plants screen the front of the lot, but when visitors wend their way into the yard, plantings curve around a grassy space.

Groundwater is pumped from near the house to an area about a half foot deep and 3 feet in diameter that creates a stone-rimmed bird bath.

"Jens would design these kinds of things."

Maloney was new to native plants when she came to the cottage, so she had to learn what works and what doesn't.

Here are a few of her favorites:

•Anemone stays green even when it's done blooming, and if it starts encroaching on other plants, it's easy to pull out.

•Virginia bluebells are knockouts in the spring. Trillium is wonderfully subtle or elegant.

•She loves the paw paw tree although she's never been able to taste the fruit because the deer eat it.

•Other plants in her garden include iris, golden Alexander, pagoda dogwood, viburnum service berry, wild indigo and goats beard.

•Some of the oaks date back 250 years.

•"I don't think friends give friends northern sea oats, although if contained it looks nice." The ornamental grass self-seeds and can overgrow.

Maloney has developed her own philosophy of gardening: "I let plants do what they want and I edit it. If it's going well and looks good to me, that's fine. If I made a mistake and pull out the wrong thing, it'll come back."

She agrees with studies that show neighbors accept native plants better if the homeowner includes "cues to care."

That means it looks like things are planned and cared for, not just growing wild.

Thus mulching, edging or perching nonnative plants where they're visible can help. She moved nonnative peony and planted sedum in more visible spots.

"You can't expect big huge blossoms with native flowers. Most of the cultivars they breed so flowers grow bigger and bigger and bigger."

And she explains why landmark restrictions are a good idea on her own property.

"More people than you own it, and you really respect that fact. Coonley descendants have walked through - it's kind of neat to have something that will last beyond you."

The Maloneys get along with the owners of the other buildings but feel independent.

"The gardener's cottage is the only building on the estate that still serves its original purpose as a single-family home," said Maloney.

The main house has been divided into two homes, and the stables, which is very close to the cottage, is now a residence, as is the famous playhouse with its playful art glass windows where Queene Coonley taught kindergarten.

Cathy Maloney, who is an editor for Chicagoland Gardening magazine, writes a column for the Morton Arboretum that appears in some zones of the Daily Herald Neighbor section. Her website is gardenerscottageriverside.com.