After studying landscape architecture at Cornell University in the 1930s, Ruth Shellhorn traveled home to South Pasadena on a mail boat through the Panama Canal. On her journey, she kept a meticulous diary of the exotic plants she encountered in Central and South America: bougainvillea, palm trees, birds of paradise.
With her rigorous training and new data on tropical plants, combined with the gardening experiences of her youth in the mild, Mediterranean-like climate of the San Gabriel Valley, Shellhorn embarked on a 57-year career as a landscape architect.
By the time she retired in 1990, she was recognized for helping define the Southern California look of midcentury modern architecture for the now-defunct Bullock's department store chain and planning some of the central landscaping elements of the Disneyland theme park.
Shellhorn, 97, died Nov. 3 at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. No cause of death was announced, but her friend and fellow landscape architect Kelly Comras said Shellhorn had suffered a stroke a few days earlier.
"She was a landscape architect's landscape architect," said Comras, who is writing a biography of Shellhorn. "She was a terrific site planner, she had exquisite planting skills, she wrote well.... When she designed something, she had complete command of construction details. She didn't just rely on employees and contractors to fill in the gaps."
A modest, unassuming woman, Shellhorn enjoyed collaborating with architects and engineers and adapted her designs to fit the particular needs of her clients and their sites. Besides Bullock's and Walt Disney Co., they included UC Riverside and individual homeowners.
Shellhorn was hired by Bullock's in 1945 as consulting landscape architect for the Pasadena store, designed by prominent Los Angeles architect Welton Becket. Housed in a sleek, modernist structure, it was one of the first department stores to offer a relaxing, enjoyable experience to the sophisticated shopper who arrived by car.
"She was very actively involved in creating the whole setting and ambience of modern shopping," said Kathryn Gleason, associate professor and chairwoman of the Landscape Architecture Department at Cornell. "That transition that one made from getting out of the car and into the mood for the shopping experience was very different."
Shellhorn's design encompassed a bold combination of plants, textures and colors with a minimum of fussy details that matched the architecture, Comras said. "The minute you crossed the property line, you entered a Shellhorn landscape."
Bullock's was so pleased with her work that the company hired her to design the landscaping at most of its future stores and manage the maintenance of the chain's landscaping, which she did through 1978. She also was responsible for landscaping the Fashion Square shopping centers, anchored by Bullock's stores, at Santa Ana, Sherman Oaks, La Habra and Del Amo in Torrance. (Macy's took over Bullock's in the late 1980s and eventually renamed all of the stores.)
Becket, who worked with Shellhorn on several of those projects, recommended her to Walt Disney in 1955, only a few months before his new amusement park was to open in Anaheim. Disney was looking for a liaison between chief landscape architects Jack and Bill Evans and the other designers.
"He had five different art directors, and he was concerned that the five 'lands' wouldn't hang together," Comras said, referring to the five themed areas that made up much of the original park.
Disney wanted Shellhorn to help integrate those disparate parts into a cohesive whole, but she recalled her uncertainty about the project last year in an interview for a Times feature.
"I was sort of thinking it was going to be some honky-tonk like Venice or something, and I wasn't too sure I wanted to do it," Shellhorn said.
But Disney charmed her, and she joined the design group's pressure-filled sprint to opening day.
The art directors quickly approved her landscaping plan for Main Street, so she continued sketching landscaping designs for the Town Square just inside the main gate, the Plaza Hub at the center of the park and finally the pedestrian traffic plan for the park.
By using screens and plants compatible with differing styles of architecture, Shellhorn was able to ease the transition from the Victorian look of the plaza to western-themed Frontierland, for instance.
In looking back at the era, Comras noted, "It was unusual for a woman to have the responsibilities she did.... She was not a feminist, she was just extremely competent."
Gleason, from Cornell, called Shellhorn a "modern professional woman" who maintained that she experienced no discrimination.
"I think a lot of it's in your own attitude," Shellhorn told an interviewer in 2001 for the Pasadena Heritage Oral History Project. "If you go at it as a person, you're not a woman or a man. It doesn't make any difference. You have a problem to solve. So you cooperate and you work on that problem."
She did have the support of her husband, Harry Kueser, a St. Louis native who left his banking career in 1945, when her landscape architecture work was taking off. He handled the business side of her practice, allowing her to concentrate on design.
They married in 1940 -- when he was 42 and she 31 -- only when she was certain she would not have to give up her career.
The work poured in to her office, first in South Pasadena and then in Redondo Beach, where she had lived since 1961. In 1956, Shellhorn was chosen to be the landscape architect at a new University of California campus in Riverside. For the next eight years she designed and oversaw the university's landscaping plans.
Other campus projects followed, including the elite Marlborough School in Hancock Park and the Harvard School (now Harvard-Westlake School) in North Hollywood.
Shellhorn designed the landscaping for many commercial sites across the Southland, including Becket's Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, as well as hundreds of residential gardens.
She won numerous awards, most notably fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1971.
Arthur L. Shellhorn, a dentist, and Lodema Gould Shellhorn, his socially active wife, moved to California from Nebraska after marrying in 1904. Their only child, Ruth Patricia Shellhorn, was born Sept. 21, 1909, in Los Angeles, and the family moved to South Pasadena two years later.
As a child, she tended a garden, climbed trees, read fairy tales and swam in the ocean on family trips to Laguna Beach. By the time she was a teenager she knew she wanted a career that allowed her to work outdoors.
She studied landscape architecture at what is now Oregon State University and then Cornell, leaving during the Depression a few units shy of graduation. Last year Cornell reviewed its records and belatedly awarded her two degrees, a bachelor's in landscape architecture and a bachelor's in architecture.
"Cornell doesn't give honorary degrees," Gleason said. "She really did earn those degrees."
Shellhorn's husband died in 1991, and she leaves no survivors. And because landscapes naturally change with time and developers alter plans, few of her designs remain intact.
Services will be private. Comras is seeking information for her book about Shellhorn's work, particularly her residential designs. She can be reached at \o7k_comras@hotmail .com.
Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA) - November 7, 2006
Kueser, Ruth P. Shellhorn
Born in Los Angeles, California to Dr. Arthur L Shellhorn D.D.S. and Lodema Gould. Passed away on Friday, November 3, 2006 in Torrance. Lived in South Pasadena 1911-1961, Redondo Beach 1961-2006.Studied Landscape Architecture at Oregon State College 1927-30, Cornell University College of Architecture 1930-33. B.A. in Landscape Architecture and B.A. in Architecture, both dated 1933 presented in Southern California by Cornell in recognition of career achievement, 2005.Landscape Architect for Bullock's stores and shopping centers 1945-78, University of California Riverside 1956-64, Consulting landscape architect and site planner of central areas of pedestrian traffic, Disneyland 1955. Consulting landscape architect Rolling Hills Community Association 1973-92, Marlborough School, Harvard School, El Camino College, and many gardens and estates.Received many awards for various projects, national, state, and city. Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year 1955, South Pasadena San Marino Woman of the Year 1955, Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumni Achievement Award 1960 and 2005, California State Garden Clubs Award 1984, Horticulturist of the Year Award by Southern California Horticultural Association 1986, Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Landscape Architects 2005, Fellow American Society of Landscape Architects 1971.Interment, San Gabriel Cemetery, private. Any donations may be made to The Nature Conservancy of California, 201 Mission Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 or to The Student Conservation Association, P.O. Box 550, Charlestown, NH 03603-0550. Please sign the guest book at: www.dailybreeze.com/obits