Zila A. Robbins
Gardens of Indianapolis
I started a search to find some Lost Ladies of Garden Writing from Indiana—my home state—by diving into the newspaper archives for Indianapolis newspapers from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. I used terms like “gardening” and “garden editor” and after a few attempts, I found today’s featured writer, Zila A. Robbins.
Her Biography
From ancestry.com, I found out that Zila was born on May 7, 1889, in Galt, Missouri, to Alsie Elizabeth Knight and Rev. Grant A Robbins, a Methodist minister. She was their oldest child. Her brother, Foster, was born in 1891, and her sister E. Louise was born in 1896. Much later in 1915, her youngest brother, Grant, was born.
After graduating from high school in Maryville, Missouri, she attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. From a news article in the Thursday, Feb. 06, 1913 edition of the Weekly Democrat-Forum and Maryville Tribune, I learned that Zila taught for one year at Epworth Seminary in Iowa before going to Washington University to work as an assistant to a professor and complete her master’s degree in history.
When I next encountered Zila, she was an English teacher at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she taught from 1920 to 1947.
I also found a few news clippings about her summers, which she spent mostly traveling. In The Indianapolis News on Wed., June 13, 1928, they reported that after going to St. Louis, MO, she was heading to Amherst College for a summer course in Landscape Gardening. Another article in the Kansas City Star mentioned she spent the summer of 1936 in Japan, Korea, and China.
After retiring from teaching, Zila moved to Santa Barbara, California. She passed away in 1974. Her obituary in the Indianapolis Star stated she was born in Kansas and attended Doane College in Nebraska, but honestly, I think that was not the case, as other newspaper clippings mention the information I provided above.
Her Garden Writing
So why do I think she is a Lost Lady of Garden Writing?
I found her garden writing in The Indianapolis Star where, in 1930, she wrote 15 articles about interesting gardens in Indianapolis, with the first one published on Feb. 23, 1930.
She wrote in the forward:
“In a short series of articles on Indianapolis gardens, there will be an attempt to show the number of styles of gardens represented here and the range of adaptation of identical styles. No two gardens in which people spend much time are alike. They vary delightfully and their charm depends not on size or elaborateness, for they demand, even more than houses, the devotion of their owners.”
The profiles included the addresses of the gardens and are a treasure trove of information for local historians.
Of particular note, some of the gardens she profiled included:
A garden designed by Jens Jensen1, which I once visited with other members of GardenComm in 2011 when their annual convention was held in Indianapolis.
The gardens on the estate of J. I. Holcomb, which featured a Japanese garden designed by T. J. Otsuka. Today, it is part of the campus of Butler University, and there is no mention in the description of the original Japanese garden design2.
The gardens around the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh McKennan Landon, called Oldfields. They sold the house to the Lilly Family, and it is now part of Newsfields.3
In addition to those 15 garden profiles, Zila also wrote a series of seven articles that same year about country clubs and municipal golf courses in Indianapolis.
Her Teaching Career
To understand what her teaching career might have been like, it’s helpful to know what kind of high school she taught at. The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis described Tech, as locals called Arsenal Technical High School in the 1930s:
By 1930 there were 242 teachers and 6,000 students in 12 buildings. The curriculum had expanded by 1948 to 413 different subjects, including many in “life adjustment,” a national trend emphasizing general education and social skills. Tech was at the forefront of this innovation, as it had been with vocational education.
Given where she taught, it makes sense that the one book Zila co-wrote with Marjorie Medary, in 1944, would be for the types of students who would attend that high school.
Per the description, it “provides English classes with up-to-date material in the field of vocations: Workers in agriculture and natural resouces, manufactuing and industry, and transportation and communication.”
She also taught a class called “English IVg” per this newspaper clipping:
Personal Connections?
When I discovered Zila, I realized that my mom or her sister or her brothers, who all attended Tech high school during the time Zila was there, could have been taught by her. But then I read in a clip in The Indianapolis Times from 1933 that there were 44 English teachers at Tech then, and decided it was a long shot at best.
Then I went on a hunt for my mom’s high school yearbook from 1947, to see if it contained one last picture of Miss Zila Robbins, and discovered that my siblings and I do not know where that yearbook is.4
If we find that yearbook, and it has a picture of Zila, I’ll update this post.
In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at a high school English teacher, who wrote about the gardens of Indianapolis nearly 100 years ago, thus qualifying her to be a Lost Lady of Garden Writing.
Do you know of other women authors of gardening books that I should research as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing? Send them my way via a comment or email!
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I’ll return with the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing article in two weeks. In the meantime, you can find me in several places: my website and blog, The Gardenangelists podcast, and my weekly newsletter, In the Garden With Carol.
For more information on the landscape designer Jens Jensen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Jensen_%28landscape_architect%29
For more information on Holcomb Gardens: https://www.tclf.org/butler-university-holcomb-gardens It sounds like the gardens were completely redesigned in the late 1940s.
For more information on the Lilly House at Newfields: https://discovernewfields.org/do-and-see/places-to-go/lilly-house
My source for looking through old books, archive.org, is currently down, so I can’t see the yearbook they might have archived or her book, All in the Day’s Work, online.
As a native Hoosier, I particularly liked this post!