Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll was among the most influential English garden designers and she was born in November 1843 in London, but grew up in Surrey.  Although she is listed as a garden designer, her greatest skill lay in planting and she she is best known for her partnership with architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.  While Lutyens designed the houses Gertrude Jekyll worked on the garden design and the planting schemes.

One of their most famous collaberations was Gertrude's home, Munstead Wood at Godalming in Surrey.  Gertrude Jekyll studied botanical drawing at the Kensington School of Art and she used these skills on her first trip to Italy in 1863 when she made sketches and paintings of plants and landscapes.  Gertrude's interest in plants and design led to her designing the lay-out of the gardens at Munstead.

During the 1880s Gertrude Jekyll was writing for The Garden magazine and soon became a well-known figure in the gardening world.  Gertrude's attitude to garden design was heavily influenced by the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement, absorbed from John Ruskin and William Morris who advocated that there should be a sympathetic relationship between the house and its surroundings and the foliage and colour of the plants should be chosen in order to create a 'practical and beautiful effect'.  Gertrude believed that a garden should present us with unexpected views and surprises and her gardens are divided up into different 'rooms', each with its own look and feel.  This concept together with her naturalistic planting schemes is popular once again at the beginning of the 21st century.

Gertrude Jekyll designed over 400 gardens for clients in England, Europe and America.  She also ran a nursery garden business and bred many new plants herself at Munstead Wood.  Gertrude wrote 13 books, some of which were revised and re-published during her lifetime and she also wrote over a 1000 articles on gardening, many for Country Life magazine.

Not many of Gertrude Jekyll's gardens have survived but there are still a few to visit - Munstead Wood, Getrude's home which has recently been restored to her original plans, Hatchlands Park in Surrey, where Gertrude designed the formal terraces and Woodhouse Copse in Surrey, with its woodland garden, lake and waterfalls are well worth visiting.  If you want to see the Jekyll/Lutyens partnership at its best you should try to visit Hestercombe in Somerset - you will not be disappointed.  Glebe House in Woodbury, Connecticut is a fine example of a Jekyll garden outside of England - it was restored in 1990 and is open to the public.

Gertrude Jekyll died on 9 December 1932 at her home Munstead Wood in Surrey and is buried in the churchyard at St John's Church, Bushridge under a gravestone designed by Edwin Lutyens.