Henrietta Frances Phipps (née Lamb, 9 December 1931 – 27 May 2016) was a British

landscape gardener Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

. Phipps worked for the

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is an Inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the ...

for many years and "shaped the look of the royal borough".

Early life

Phipps was born in

Paddington, London Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddingto ...

on 9 December 1931, the eldest of three children of the artist

Henry Lamb Henry Taylor Lamb (21 June 1883 – 8 October 1960) was an Australian-born British painter. A follower of Augustus John, Lamb was a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and of the London Group in 1913. Early life Henry Lamb was bo ...

, and the writer, Lady Pansy Pakenham. She grew up in the village of

Coombe Bissett Coombe Bissett is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire in the River Ebble valley, southwest of Salisbury on the A354 road that goes south towards Blandford Forum. The parish includes the village of Homington, to the e ...

, three miles southwest of

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

and was educated at

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

, Oxford.

Career

Phipps' first employment after graduating from Oxford was for the writer

Peter Quennell Sir Peter Courtney Quennell (9 March 1905 – 27 October 1993) was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic. He wrote extensively on social history. Life Born in Bickley, Kent, the son of architect C. H ...

History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...

. She later took up landscape gardening and was a long-standing member of the Ladbroke Square Gardens Committee. She gave guided tours of the gardens, spoke at residents' meetings, and wrote articles on the communal gardens, including two published in the Ladbroke Association newsletter in 1994 and 1996. Phipps worked for the Kensington and Chelsea Council and landscaped a number of their public areas.

Personal life

Phipps married the

silversmith A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exactly synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product may vary great ...

, William Phipps, in 1960. He was the son of Sir

Eric Phipps Sir Eric Clare Edmund Phipps (27 October 1875 – 13 August 1945) was a British diplomat. Family Phipps was the son of Sir Constantine Phipps, later British Ambassador to Belgium, and his wife, Maria Jane (née Miller Mundy). Henry Phipps, ...

, the

British ambassador to Germany The British Ambassador to Germany is the United Kingdom's foremost diplomatic representative in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in charge of the UK's diplomatic mission in Germany. The official title is ''His Britannic Majesty's Ambassado ...

from 1933 to 1937 and ambassador to France from 1937 to 1939. She met her future husband when her father was painting a portrait of Eric Phipps. The Phipps had three sons and a daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Phipps, Henrietta 1931 births 2016 deaths British gardeners People from Paddington Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford