Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British
horticulturist
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
,
garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist.
She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1000 articles
for magazines such as
''Country Life'' and
William Robinson's ''The Garden''. Jekyll has been described as "a premier influence in garden design" by British and American gardening enthusiasts.
Early life
Jekyll was born at 2 Grafton Street,
Mayfair
Mayfair is an affluent area in the West End of London towards the eastern edge of Hyde Park, in the City of Westminster, between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane. It is one of the most expensive districts in the world ...
, London, the fifth of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll, an officer in the
Grenadier Guards
"Shamed be whoever thinks ill of it."
, colors =
, colors_label =
, march = Slow: " Scipio"
, mascot =
, equipment =
, equipment ...
, and his wife Julia, ''née'' Hammersley.
In 1848 her family left London and moved to
Bramley House in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...
, where she spent her formative years. She never married and had no children.
Her younger brother,
Walter Jekyll (an Anglican priest; sometime
Minor Canon of
Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, in Worcestershire, England, situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Bless ...
and
Chaplain of Malta), was a friend of
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as '' Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...
who borrowed the family name for his 1886 novella ''
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde''.
Themes
Jekyll was one half of one of the most influential and historical partnerships of the
Arts and Crafts movement, thanks to her association with the English architect
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memor ...
, for whose projects she created numerous landscapes and who designed her home
Munstead Wood, near
Godalming in Surrey. (In 1900, Lutyens and Jekyll's brother Herbert designed the British Pavilion for the
Paris Exposition.)
Jekyll is remembered for her outstanding designs and subtle, painterly approach to the arrangement of the gardens she created, particularly her "hardy flower borders". Her work is known for its radiant colour and the brush-like strokes of her plantings; it is suggested by some that the Impressionistic-style schemes may have been due to Jekyll's deteriorating eyesight, which largely put an end to her career as a painter and watercolourist. Her artistic ability had been evident when she was a child and she had trained as an artist.
She was one of the first of her profession to take into account the colour, texture, and experience of gardens as aspects of her designs. Jekyll's theory of how to design with colour was influenced by painter
J.M.W. Turner and by
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
, and by the theoretical
colour wheel
A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors etc.
Some sources use the terms ''color wheel'' & ' ...
. Her focus on gardening began at
South Kensington School of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It off ...
,
where she became interested in the creative art of planting, and more specifically, gardening. Jekyll later returned to her childhood home in the village of Bramley to design a garden in Snowdenham Lane called Millmead.
Not wanting to limit her influence to teaching the practice of gardening, Jekyll incorporated in her work the theory of gardening and an understanding of the plants themselves. Her writing was influenced by her friend
Theresa Earle
(Maria) Theresa Earle born (Maria) Theresa Villiers writing as Mrs C. W. Earle (8 June 1836 – 27 February 1925) was a British horticulturist. She published three Pot-Pourri gardening guides starting in 1897.
Life
Earle was born in 1836 in Lo ...
who had published her "Pot-pourri" books. In works like ''Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden'' (reprinted 1988) she put her imprint on modern uses of "warm" and "cool" flower colours in gardens. Her concern that plants should be displayed to best effect even when cut for the house, led her to design her own range of glass flower vases.
Later in life, Jekyll collected and contributed a vast array of plants solely for the purpose of preservation to numerous institutions across Britain. At the time of her death, she had designed over 400 gardens in Britain, Europe and a few in North America. Jekyll was also known for her prolific writing. She wrote over fifteen books, ranging from ''Wood and Garden'' and her most famous book, ''Colour in the Flower Garden,'' to memoirs of her youth.
She was also interested in traditional cottage furnishings and rural crafts, and concerned that they were disappearing. Her book ''Old West Surrey'' (1904) records many aspects of 19th-century country life, with over 300 photographs taken by Jekyll.
Gardens
From 1881, when she laid out the gardens for Munstead House, built for her mother by
John James Stevenson, Jekyll provided designs or planned planting for some four hundred gardens. More than half were directly commissioned, but many were created in collaboration with architects such as Lutyens and
Robert Lorimer.
[ Most of her gardens are lost. A small number have been restored, including her own garden at Munstead Wood, the gardens of ]Hestercombe House
Hestercombe House is a historic country house in the parish of West Monkton in the Quantock Hills, near Taunton in Somerset, England. The house is a Grade II* listed building and the estate is Grade I listed on the English Heritage Register o ...
, and those of Woolverstone House and the Manor House in Upton Grey that she designed for the magazine editor Charles Holme
Charles Holme (; 1848–1923) was an English journalist and art critic, founding editor of ''The Studio'' from 1893. He published a series of books promoting peasant art in the first decades of the 20th century.
Life
Holme was born on 7 Octob ...
.[Betty Massingham (2006 975]
''Gertrude Jekyll: An Illustrated Life of Gertrude Jekyll, 1843–1932''
Princes Risborough: Shire Press. p. 44.
File:Hestercombe rill3.jpg, Hestercombe Gardens
Image:Jekyll Manor House Border.jpg, Jekyll's restored long border at Upton Grey Manor House, Hampshire
File:Hestercombe; Lutyens designed bench.jpg, Hestercombe Gardens, the Lutyens-designed bench
File:Lindisfarne Castle and its Jekyll Garden - geograph.org.uk - 334038.jpg, Lindisfarne Castle
File:Hestercombe06.jpg, Hestercombe Gardens, borrowed scenery
Awards
Jekyll was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horticultural Society
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity.
The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nor ...
in 1897 and the Veitch Memorial Medal of the society in 1929. Also in 1929, she was given the George Robert White Medal of Honor of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.[Michael Tooley (2004)]
Jekyll, Gertrude (1843–1932)
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press.
Burial
Jekyll was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Busbridge, Godalming, next to her brother, Herbert Jekyll, and his wife, the artist, writer and philanthropist Dame Agnes Jekyll
Dame Agnes Lowndes Jekyll, ( Graham; 12 October 1861 – 28 January 1937) was a Scottish-born British artist, writer and philanthropist. The daughter of William Graham, Liberal MP for Glasgow (1865–1874) and patron of the Pre-Raphael ...
. The Jekyll family memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memor ...
.
Legacy
In 1907, Jekyll donated her collection of traditional household items and objects relating to "Old Surrey" to the Surrey Archaeological Society. Much of this donation is still on display at Guildford Museum
Guildford Museum is the main museum in the town of Guildford, Surrey, England. The museum is on Quarry Street, a narrow road lined by pre-1900 cottages running just off the pedestrianised High Street. This main site of the museum forms the gate ...
. In 1911, the Corporation of Guildford built an extension to the museum to house the collection. Some artefacts associated with her life and work are also housed there.
On 29 November 2017, which would have been Jekyll's 174th birthday, a Google Doodle was released honouring her.
Books
*
Wood and Garden
' (Longmans, Green and Co., 1899).
*
Home and Garden
' (Longmans, Green and Co., 1900).
* (with E. Mawley)
Roses for English Gardens
' (London: Country Life, 1902).
*
Wall and Water Gardens
' (London: Country Life, 1902).
*
Lilies for English Gardens
' (London: Country Life, 1903).
* (with illustrations by George S. Elgood)
Some English Gardens
' (Longmans, Green & Co., 1904)
*
Old West Surrey
' (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904).
*
Colour in the Flower Garden
' (London: Country Life, 1908).
*
Annuals & Biennials
' (London: Country Life, 1916)
*
Children and Gardens
' (London: Country Life, 1908).
* (with Lawrence Weaver)
Gardens for Small Country Houses
' (London: Country Life, 1914).
*
Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden
' (London: Country Life, 1919).
See also
* The Bois des Moutiers (she designed some gardens of the Bois des Moutiers)
* Garden design
* Ralph Hancock (landscape gardener)
Ralph Hancock (2 July 1893 – 30 August 1950) was a Welsh landscape gardener, architect and author. Hancock built gardens in the United Kingdom in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and in the United States in the 1930s. He is known for the roof gar ...
* Hascombe Court
Hascombe Court is a estate in Hascombe, Surrey, best known for its vast garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll. Hascombe Court is listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England, and its gardens are also Grade II listed on the Register of ...
(designed by Jekyll)
* History of gardening
* Planting design
* Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan- Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 ...
, Venice, the garden of Jekyll's sister Caroline
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
The Gertrude Jekyll Estate
Restored Jekyll garden in Sandwich, Kent
Restored Jekyll garden at Upton Grey
Online text of Gertrude Jekyll's ''Colour schemes for the flower garden'' (1921)
Restored Jekyll garden at Durmast House, Burley, Hampshire, UK
Jekyll garden in Woodbury CT, USA
A Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens garden in France (1898)
Detailed family history
Connection between Jekyll, Eden, Baring, Hammersley and Poulett-Thomson families
Jekyll (Gertrude) Collection, 1877–1931
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jekyll, Gertrude
1843 births
1932 deaths
People from the Borough of Waverley
Arts and Crafts movement artists
English garden writers
English landscape and garden designers
English gardeners
English rose horticulturists
English horticulturists
English women writers
Veitch Memorial Medal recipients
Victoria Medal of Honour (Horticulture) recipients
Women of the Victorian era
Gardens in Hampshire
Robert Louis Stevenson
19th-century English women writers
20th-century English people
Country Life (magazine) people