Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British
horticulturist
Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...
,
garden design
Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of garden, gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expe ...
er, 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 area of Westminster, London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. It is between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane and one of the most expensive districts ...
, London, the fifth of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll,
Esquire
Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...
, an officer in the
Grenadier Guards
The Grenadier Guards (GREN GDS) is the most senior infantry regiment of the British Army, being at the top of the Infantry Order of Precedence. It can trace its lineage back to 1656 when Lord Wentworth's Regiment was raised in Bruges to protect ...
, and his wife Julia, ''née''
Hammersley. In 1848 her family left London and moved to
Bramley House in
Surrey
Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...
.
She never married and had no children.
Her younger brother,
Walter Jekyll (an Anglican priest; sometime
Minor Canon of
Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin, is a Church of England cathedral in Worcester, England, Worcester, England. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Worcester and is the Mother Church# ...
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
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.
Initiat ...
, 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 memorials ...
, for whose projects she created numerous landscapes and who designed her home
Munstead Wood, near
Godalming
Godalming ( ) is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settl ...
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,
and she also collaborated with
Minnie Walters Anson.
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 visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
, and by the theoretical
colour wheel. Her focus on gardening began at
South Kensington School of Art,
where she became interested in the creative art of planting, and more specifically, gardening. In 1904, Jekyll returned to her childhood home in the village of Bramley to design a garden for Millmead House in Snowdenham Lane.
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 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 fourteen 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
Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, Order of the British Empire, KBE (4 November 1864 – 13 September 1929) was a prolific Scotland, Scottish architect and furniture designer noted for his sensitive restorations of historic houses and castles, f ...
.[ Most of her gardens are lost. A small number have been restored, including her own garden at Munstead Wood, the gardens of Hestercombe House and The Croft in Brook, Surrey, and those of Woolverstone House and the Manor House in Upton Grey that she designed for the magazine editor Charles Holme.][Betty Massingham (2006 975]
''Gertrude Jekyll: An Illustrated Life of Gertrude Jekyll, 1843–1932''
Princes Risborough: Shire Press. p. 44. Miss Jekyll designed the plans at Durmast House and Gardens and has recently been restored, including a Summer House designed by her long standing friend, Sir Edwin Lutyens.
File:West_Rill_at_Hestercombe.jpg, The West Rill at Hestercombe Gardens, 1904
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
Lindisfarne Castle is a 16th-century castle located on Lindisfarne, Holy Island, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, much altered by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1901. The island is accessible from the mainland at low tide by means of a ca ...
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 ...
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.
Death and burial
Jekyll died on 8 December 1932 at her home, Munstead Wood, in Surrey.[ She 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. 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 memorials ...
.
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. 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, a Google Doodle was released honouring Jekyll on what would have been her 174th birthday.
In 2023, the National Trust
The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...
bought her home Munstead Wood through a private sale.
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
Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of garden, gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expe ...
* Ralph Hancock (landscape gardener)
* Hascombe Court (designed by Jekyll)
* History of gardening
* Planting design
* Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden (; ; ) or Garden of God ( and ), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2–3 and Ezekiel 28 and 31..
The location of Eden is described in the Book of Ge ...
, Venice, the garden of Jekyll's sister Caroline
* Hestercombe Gardens
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
*
*
*
Works by Gertrude Jekyll on the RHS Digital Collections website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jekyll, Gertrude
1843 births
1932 deaths
Arts and Crafts movement artists
English garden writers
English landscape and garden designers
English gardeners
English rose horticulturists
English horticulturists
People from the Borough of Waverley
People from Mayfair
Veitch Memorial Medal recipients
Victoria Medal of Honour 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