“I chose to research Los Poblanos in New Mexico because it has a deeply layered and interesting past, and an equally compelling present.”

This website was created to showcase the research I did this semester (Fall 2024) as a student in the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at University of Colorado, Denver. The class was History of Landscape Architecture, taught by Professor Ann Komara. The assignment was to choose an American landscape of historical significance to research and report on. We were to consider the HALS format of traditional reporting, yet also seek out the lesser known and underrepresented people and voices whose stories are always entwined in the complex and often violent history of our country.

Walkway to Dining Room- photographer unknown

  • Continuous human occupation since 8000BCE in Rio Grande Basin watershed​

  • Ancestral home of the Tiguex (Tiwa Pueblo) peoples​

  • Colonizer's History-Part of the Elena Gallegos Land Grant 1712​

  • The Simm's Family 1932-1964 –becomes a 'Country Place' estate and an experimental dairy, farm, and Cultural Center​

  • Architect John Gaw Meem redesigns the adobe home and outbuildings and builds La Quinta- all adorned with the work of other significant New Mexico artisans and craftspeople 1930's​

  • Rose Ishbel Greely designs six acres of gardens in a combination of Beaux-Arts and Spanish Colonial Revival Styles 1930's​

  • Los Poblanos continues to meet the challenges of a heating climate and a shrinking river by embracing Regenerative Agriculture, diversification, and wise stewardship

Location:

Los Poblanos is situated 12 miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley, in the village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. The area features scenic agricultural landscapes, historic adobe buildings, and vibrant local art. Renowned for its historical significance and natural beauty, it serves as a gateway to the Sandia Mountains and desert plains.

35degrees 08 '51.06” North 106 degrees 39’54.24” West

Tewa Ancestral Home

"The beginning of the human story, perhaps at los Poblanos, more generally in the middle Rio Grande Basin, is the gradual transition of the ancestors of the Tiguex and the people of the 19 remaining present -day Pueblos from a hunter-gatherer culture to the cultivation of plants for food, medicine, and ritual " (Phillips 7).

Photograph of the Acoma Pueblo circa 1909, credited to the Detroit Publishing Company

Elena Gallegos Spanish Land Grant

The 25 acres that makes up the present-day property of Los Poblanos was once a small part of a35, o85 acre Land Grant given to Elena Gallegos in the early 1700’s by Spanish colonialists who claimed the land. They gave these long narrow parcels of land to Spanish settler families and to some of the Pueblo villages. Located just north of the villa of Albuquerque, which was established in 1706, the grant stretched from the Rio Grande River in the east to the crest of the Sandia Mountains in the west. Upon Elena’s death in 1731, the land was deeded to her son Antonio Gurule. Upon his death, it was subdivided among his heirs.

In the early 1800’s, Ambrosio and Cristobal Armijo purchased the 500 acres immediately adjacent to the river and ranched on the land. They built the original adobe homestead that John Gaw Meems renovated in the 1930’s, and are credited with giving the site its name:Los Poblanos- meaning people from Las Pueblas, Mexico.

The Simms Family Era 1932

John Gaw Meem, Architect

John Gaw Meem is often referred to as the father of the Santa Fe Style.

He was hired in 1932 by Ruth Simms to renovate the old adobe hacienda at Los Poblanos, and then several years later he built La Quinta in the Territorial Revival style.

“ A uniquely New Mexican art form, Territorial Revival blends Greek Revival pediment windows and doors and broader European influences with the tan, mud-colored stucco finishes and white plaster walls of indigenous and Spanish styles” (Friedman).

Meem was very taken with the adobe pueblos and the Spanish -Colonial designs of New Mexico and old Mexico, which he spent his lifetime studying and helping to preserve. He became adept at making modern building techniques look like adobe structures, which he felt were a uniquely american form of modern design, and a vernacular worth emulating.

In response to modernists who were critical of his work, Meem replied:

“Particularly in the southwest, architects who use old forms need do no violence to the ideals of contemporary architectural thoughts. On the contrary, the fundamental form of the time can best be expressed in a language native to the region. These ancient shapes are modern!” (Wilson 37)

Rose Ishbel Greely

Rose Ishbel Greely was born in Washington D.C. in 1887. She studied various forms of fine arts and agriculture. In 1916, she attended the newly formed Canbridge School of Domestic and Landscape Architecture for Women, where she was trained in the Beaux Arts and Arts & Crafts styles. She graduated in 1920, and in 1925 at the age of 38, became the first licensed female architect in Washington, DC. Greely started her own firm and had 40 years of success, working on over 400 residential and commercial projects before her passing in 1969.

Rose wrote for House Beautiful for many years, where she shared her theories on design. She was very invested in bringing design elements of the architecture into the landscape. She was also very interested in agricultural innovation, something she shared with Ruth Simms, whom she had met in D.C. prior to her work at Los Poblanos. It is interesting to note that some of the techniques of zoning and native plant incorporation that she employed in her designs there are precursors for the xeriscape methods popularized 50 years later.

The Garden Designs of Rose Ishbel Greely

  • Rose Ishbel Greely was hired by Ruth Simms to design six acres of gardens at Los Poblanos to complement the architecture of John Gaw Meems.

  • View of the Placita with Moorish star fountain

  • An allee of native cottonwoods and elms still grace the entrance to Los Poblanos. They are watered by the acequia that runs through the property.

  • The Rose Greely Garden is situated west of the hacienda and has both Italian and English Renaissance influences, featuring 2 water features connected by a Mudejar rill, formal hedges, a strong axis and symmetry throughout.

  • The path to La Quinta: as the garden spaces get further from the buildings, the design style loosens and more native plants are used

  • A close-up view of the fountain in the courtyard of the Hacienda. All rooms open into the courtyard.

  • West Garden wall with irises

  • Looking toward La Quinta with pink garden phlox, formal hedges and acequia flooded lawn

  • the lotus pond- a haven for migratory waterfowl and resident wildlife

File 105, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia

The Placita

The Placita is the central courtyard of the hacienda. It is a typical 'garden room' in the Beaux arts style, with formal symmetry and a central moorish star fountain tiled with colorful Spanish tiles. The potted plants were originally geometric topiarized shrubs

Photo by Judith Phillips

Photo by Judith Phillips

Original sketches from Dec 1932 by Rose Greely showing

alternative layouts for the placita garden

The West Garden

File 105 Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia

Now aptly called the Rose Greely garden, this was the most formal and extensive of Greely’s designs for Los Poblanos. It was designed with a strong north-south axis and several smaller cross-axes, one of which sports a Mudejar rill from Islamic garden traditions. The rill connects 2 sunken basins, each adorning shady spots with thick structural walls and seating areas. There are formal hedges, parterre beds, and various framed views throughout, prompting comparisons with Italianate and English Renaissance styles. The garden is well-preserved and still has many of the original plants such as peonies, apothecary roses, bearded irises, and wisteria vines.

Photo by Judith Phillips

Los Poblanos... Present and Future

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Los Poblanos... Present and Future *

Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm:

A Vision Rooted in Sustainability

Before we talk about the future,

we need to talk about the past.

This land is marked with stories.

They are in the washes after it rains, in the small undulations,

in the rasp of desert breath.

-Autumn Bernhardt, Indigenous poet, lawyer, teacher, and rancher

Los Poblanos Now

Today, Los Poblanos is an organic lavender farm and distillery, a boutique Inn and spa, and a farm to table restaurant serving regional southwestern cuisine that still boasts of pushing an agricultural edge much as the Simm’s family did in the 1930’s.  Only this time, that edge is about adapting to a hotter and drier climate and a smaller Rio Grande River. The current owners of Los Poblanos are growing more drought resistant plants for food and for pleasure, and are experimenting with Indigenous crops of corn, squashes, and tobacco.  The climate and landscape of New Mexico has changed, largely due to the results of European conquest over the last 500 years, and those who still wish to practice agriculture in the Rio Grande Watershed, or hope to preserve the areas agrarian roots, must adapt to these changes.

In their book Farmscape, authors and landscape architects Phoebe Lickwar and Roxi Thoren explore the many benefits of places such as Los Poblanos-regionally supported working farms committed to organic and regenerative growing practices that are also “sites of beauty, community, ecological conservation, remediation, and pleasure” (Lickwar and Thoren, Intro). Such farms provide critical habitat for pollinators and wildlife, act as carbon sinks and soil regenerators, and provide increased food security and resilience for the local and global community by growing food crops and saving the seeds of diverse and often culturally relevant plants. People with the knowledge of building healthy soils, growing food, and caring for land and plant communities are incredibly valuable resources in any community.   

Diversifying our food crops is vitally important because at present 50% of the world's calories come from only 3 plants: rice, maize, and wheat, none of which are particularly drought or heat tolerant.  Relying on such monocrops leaves the global food supply incredibly vulnerable, especially when factoring in a growing global population living in ever expanding cities.  Global warming exasperates this issue as well, as large areas of the global south may become unlivable and unsuitable for food production due to increased temperatures, drought, and unstable weather patterns.  Little farms like Los Poblanos then become islands of sanctuary and sustenance, genetic protection for future redistribution of biodiversity if the world sees its folly in time and awakens from the mad dream of global predatory capitalism that is fracturing our world at present and driving us towards extinction.

Conclusion

. Toby Hemenway , the author of Gaiia’s Garden, and avid horticulturist  has long declared that it is small scale horticulture- and not large-scale chemical industrial agriculture- that will feed the world’s population in a changing world.   By horticulture Hemenway means all kinds of people growing all kinds of food in all kinds of places- from little regional farms like Los Poblanos, to people growing salad greens and dwarf lemons on their urban decks, to the re-claiming of bluegrass lawns for food forests in the suburbs- we need alot more people growing alot more food in alot more places, and fast!  Lickwar and Thoren would agree, and they challenge landscape architects to be a part of the solution: how do we design a cultural paradigm shift that “reconnects our culture to our agriculture” (Lickwar and Thoren, Intro) in ways that also regenerates ecosystems?  Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm is the posterchild for such a worthy endeavor.