Gertrude Jekyll ( 1843 - 1932 ) stands as one of the most influential figures in garden conception history , whose aesthetic vision and horticultural knowledge transformed the English garden landscape painting .
Her innovative access to colour , plant combination , and garden structure created a survive legacy that continues to exhort garden designers worldwide .
Through her prolific composition and over 400 garden design , Gertrude Jekyll help shape the Arts and Crafts movement in garden design in England and established principles that remain relevant more than a century afterwards .
Hestercombe, overlooking rill byScott Zona from USAis licensed under CC BY 2.0
Featured Image : “ Hestercombe House Gardens ” byripplestone reviewis licensed under CC BY - ND 2.0
Early Life and Artistic Foundations
Born into a flourishing kinfolk in London in 1843 , Gertrude Jekyll enjoyed a privileged upbringing that nurtured her artistic sensibilities .
Her home moved to Surrey when she was five , where her childhood was spend exploring the countryside , acquire a deep appreciation for native plant life and natural landscape . This early connexion with nature would later inform her distinctive approach to garden plan .
Jekyll ab initio pursued a life history in picture , studying at the South Kensington School of Art where she was bring out to the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement under the influence of William Morris .
Hestercombe, overlooking rill byScott Zona from USAis licensed under CC BY 2.0
This apparent motion , with its emphasis on craftsmanship and traditional skills , would later become manifest in hergarden designs . She also check in other aesthetic discipline admit embroidery , metalwork , and woodworking , manifest her versatile originative power .
Her artistic career took an unexpected turn when deteriorating eyesight forced her to abandon picture in her early fifties . Rather than viewing this as a limitation , Gertrude Jekyll airt her artistic vigor toward garden aim , where she could use her painter ’s agreement of colour concord on a larger canvass .
Partnership with Edwin Lutyens
Perhaps one of the most fruitful collaborations in landscape painting design chronicle began in 1889 when Jekyll met the youthful designer Edwin Lutyens .
Their professional partnership , which lasted for decades , perfectly married Lutyens ’ architectural precision with Jekyll ’s naturalistic planting way . Together they create rafts of garden where Lutyens would provide the “ finger cymbals ” of the garden — the bench , step , and bodily structure — while Jekyll filled these space with cautiously orchestrated industrial plant combinations .
Their most famous coaction was at Hestercombe in Somerset , where the schematic garden illustrate their complementary talent . T
he garden features Lutyens ’ geometrical stonework softened by Jekyll ’s lucullan plantings , creating a harmony between structure and nature that became their hallmark .
Design Philosophy and Innovation
Gertrude Jekyll revolutionised garden design through her artistic approach to planting .
Drawing on her painter ’s training , she treated the garden as a three - dimensional canvas , using works as her pallet . Her signature innovation was the herbaceous delimitation — long stretches of repeated planting arrange in a cautiously orchestrated color schema that would evolve throughout the time of year .
Jekyll ’s understanding of color possibility inform her typical “ color drifts , ” where flowers were arrange in gradual progressions of coloration , creating visual concord and a mother wit of movement through the garden .
She often start with cool colours like blues and purples , transitioning through pinks to quick orangeness and yellows , before cooling down again — an glide path that reflected her artistic sensitivity to color relationships .
Beyond aesthetics , Jekyll held hardheaded horticultural knowledge . She championed the use of aboriginal industrial plant and understood the importance of considering a plant ’s natural habitat when position it in a garden . Her plan act upon with the environment rather than against it , a philosophy that prefigure modernistic ecologic horticulture overture .
Munstead Wood: Gertrude Jekyll’s Laboratory
In 1883 , Jekyll buy land in Godalming , Surrey , where she built her home , Munstead Wood ( design by Lutyens ) , and develop her most personal garden . This garden became both her living quad and experimental laboratory where she tested plant combinations and refined her design principles .
At Munstead Wood , Jekyll created a series of garden rooms , each with its own character and determination . There was aSpring Garden , July Border , Hidden Garden , and her illustrious herbaceous borderline .
The woodland garden demonstrated her skill at creating naturalistic plantings that mime uncivilized landscape painting while subtly enhancing their lulu through thoughtful industrial plant excerption .
The garden at Munstead Wood embody Jekyll ’s belief that garden should ply a seamless transition between the architecture of the house and the surrounding landscape . This principle of harmonious integrating between built environment and nature remains one of her most enduring contribution to garden excogitation .
Literary Legacy
Jekyll ’s influence extends beyond the gardens she design through her prolific writing vocation . She authored over fifteen books on gardening and contributed over a thousand articles to publication including Country Life and The Garden . Her writing elan unite practical horticultural advice with an artist ’s sensitivity to beauty .
Her most famous work , “ Colour in the Flower Garden ” ( 1908 ) , straighten out her design philosophy and provided detailed guidance on creating proportionate plant combinations .
Other meaning plant include “ Wood and Garden ” ( 1899 ) and “ Home and Garden ” ( 1900 ) , which draw from her experiences at Munstead Wood .
Through her written material , Jekyll democratize sophisticated garden intention rule , making them approachable to home gardeners . Her practical approach emphasised that beautiful gardens could be produce even in modest spaces if rule of colour , texture , and seasonal interest were thoughtfully applied .
Gertrude Jekyll Enduring Influence
Gertrude Jekyll ’s impact on garden design can not be overstated . She bridged the Victorian epoch ’s formal gardening traditions and the more naturalistic approaches that would develop in the twentieth 100 . Her colouration - themed molding and aesthetic plant groupings influenced multiplication of interior decorator , from Vita Sackville - West at Sissinghurst to contemporary couturier worldwide .
Jekyll forge well into her eighties , go on to design gardens and write until her destruction in 1932 . By then , she had designed over 400 gardens in Britain , Europe , and America , though many have been lost to time and change fashions .
The preservation of her design plans in the collection at the University of California , Berkeley has allowed for the restoration of many of her gardens . situation like Hestercombe and The Manor House at Upton Grey have been meticulously restored according to her original plans , allowing modern visitors to experience Jekyll ’s visual sense at first hand .
Hestercombe, overlooking rill byScott Zona from USAis licensed under CC BY 2.0
Summing Up
Gertrude Jekyll ’s legacy lies not just in the strong-arm gardens she created , but in her holistic approach to garden figure that get married esthetic principles with horticultural noesis .
Her visual sense of the garden as a place of ravisher , rumination , and connectedness with nature continues to resonate with present-day nurseryman and designers .
In an historic period of increase environmental awareness , Jekyll ’s raw approach to working with lifelike conditions rather than visit hokey environment seems particularly prescient .
Munstead Wood bySarahis licensed under CC BY 2.0
Her life ’s work demonstrates how gardens can be both artistically substantial and ecologically legal , a equilibrium that remains relevant in addressing the horticulture challenge of the twenty-first one C .
Martin Cole has been an avid plant lover and nurseryman for more than 20 years and eff to talk and write about gardening . In 2006 he was a finalist in the BBC Gardener of the Year rivalry . He is a phallus of the National dahlia Society .
He antecedently lived in London and Sydney , Australia , where he took a diploma line in Horticultural studies and is now based in North Berwick in Scotland . He found GardeningStepbyStep.com in 2012 . The website is propose at everybody who loves flora or has been bitten by the horticulture bug and wants to acknowledge more .
Long Barn from the beds planned with Lutyens byJack Hollowayis licensed under CC BY 2.0
Gardening Step by Step has beencited by Thompson and Morgan , the UK ’s largest chain armour order industrial plant retailer , as a web site that write practiced gardening content .
