HIGHER GROUND
WALK around to the back of the Lilly mansion on the grounds of Newfields and look to the west. Until recently, a tangle of scrub trees dominated the view down to the canal, across the lake in 100 Acres, to the oxbow of the White River. It wasn’t exactly an ugly sight. But it wasn’t particularly inspiring either.
After Newfields hired celebrated land-scape architect David Rubin to create a 30-year land-use plan in 2017, one of its first moves was to follow his suggestion to remove a panoramic section of that overgrowth. Today, the vista—once hidden by twists of invasive species that took hold after the property west of the canal, a former gravel pit, grew back to nature—is one of the most gorgeous in the city. Rubin didn’t need to reshape the hill or plant an elaborate hedgerow. He simply saw what was already there.
“All it took was this clearing,” Rubin said on a recent visit, admiring the joggers and cyclists on the canal towpath below.
Based in Philadelphia, where he runs the firm Land Collective, Rubin also researched the area’s past and its uses over time. He wanted to reveal not only the beauty of the Newfields property, but also the history that made the surrounding infrastructure possible. “You can see former farmland that became a quarry to make the highways and roads around here,” he says. “You can see the canal, which provided water for Indianapolis. All of those things are important. And now from the lake, from 100 Acres, you can see the estate
