Editor, author, landscape architect, consultant, parks curator — Susan Rademacher’s resume includes all of these accomplishments. She is former president and executive director of Louisville’s Olmsted Parks Conservancy, and in January she returned to the Louisville area to serve as executive director of River Heritage Conservancy’s Origin Park, a 600+ acre park stretching along the Southern Indiana shoreline. To add to her impressive list of achievements, Susan received the 2022 Historic Preservation Medal from the Garden Club of America.
What do you love about what you do?
It doesn’t matter the structure of the job if it can move my purpose forward to put people and landscapes together. I know how it works now after a long career in doing just that.
Before returning to Louisville?
I retired from Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and started my own consulting business. I was doing planning, designing, and consulting and enjoying this new life and on a good path. Then I got the call that the River Heritage executive director position was available and was very excited about that.
Why did this new project excite you?
I came in at the point from genesis to actually beginning to build and design and construct the park. It is a chance to take on such a project of importance that uses every single thing that I do while making a significant transformation for the people in this region.
Why the name Origin Park?
The focus is on the Ohio River and at the epicenter of nature and cultural history in this region. The name can also represent an origination or rebirth of community spirit, nature, and connections with each other.
What is your superpower?
Seeing creative solutions and connections.
One of your biggest fears?
Climate change.
Broke your heart?
I’m an avid reader and when we moved to Louisville I reduced my library by 75 percent. Still, I brought boxes and boxes of books with me.
A treasured possession?
A Victorian cast iron planting urn that was a gift from artist Ewing Fahey. We met in an art gallery in New York City, and she nurtured me as an artist. We worked together on the design for the Original Highlands entryway that is a tribute to the different styles of architecture in that neighborhood.
What does the average American not understand about…?
…urban parks. They are for people and a lot of invisible work goes into creating them. They are designed to invite people to move through them and explore. As landscape designers, we want to get out of the way of your experience with nature.
Who would you like to meet and what would you ask?
Greta Thunberg the Swedish environmental activist. I would ask what she wants the people of our generation to focus on in the time we have left. What does one person do? How can we work to reclaim a place in the global ecology and change the course of climate change?
By Lucy M. Pritchett | Illustration by Dan Kisner
P.S. Take a walk to de-stress.
Leave a Reply