Jekyll's
Design
A Living Museum of Gertrude Jekyll's Designs
Gertrude
Jekyll, 1843-1932, was probably the most respected gardener of her time
and her influence on the art of gardening is evident throughout the
world today. She designed about 400 gardens (three of which were for
clients in the United States) but, because so few survive and only a
handful are accurately restored, it is by her books and articles that
she is best remembered. She taught the world the full craft and art
of gardening. She appreciated the beauty of both natural and formal
styles and explained the importance of structure, proportion, colour,
scent and texture in gardens of almost any scale. As her obituary stated,
Gertrude Jekyll....is due not only the complete transformation of horticultural
design, but also that wide diffusion of knowledge and taste that has
made us almost a nation of gardeners ".
Gertrude
Jekyll was born in 1843, the fourth of six surviving children, into
an affluent, artistic family. As a young girl her parents allowed her
to take the unusual step of attending Henry Coles's School of Art at
South Kensington in London. Here she made the first of many friends
in the world of arts and crafts, and, through those, into the world
of horticulture and architecture. Gertrude Jekyll was an intelligent,
witty and popular woman but she was large and a little plain. In the
nineteenth century the role of the spinster daughter was usually to
look after ageing parents, but both Gertrude and her family were enlightened
enough to accept that she would make a career in art, writing and garden
design.
As her eyesight grew
weaker with age, Jekyll was advised by doctors to give up close, demanding
work such as painting and the many other applied arts she had mastered.
She concentrated her talents on gardening. When she was 46 she met the
aspiring young architect Edwin Lutyens who was then, in 1889, only 20.
There developed between them a respect for each other's work and a profound
friendship that was to last for the rest of her life. She died at the
age of 89 in 1932 having left the world of horticulture several books,
hundreds of articles and albums of photographs and almost everyone of
her garden plans.
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Copyright © 2008 Ros Wallinger