Louise Beebe Wilder (January 30, 1878 – April 20, 1938) was an American gardening writer and designer whose books are now considered classics of their era.

Biography

Louise Beebe was born to a well-to-do family in

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

in 1878. She showed an early interest in gardening. In 1902, she married architect Walter Robb Wilder, and the couple moved to

Pomona, New York Pomona is a village partly in the town of Ramapo and partly in the town of Haverstraw in Rockland County, New York, United States. It is located north of New Hempstead, east of Harriman State Park, north of Monsey and west of Mount Ivy. A ...

, where she transformed the rural property (known as Balderbrae), adding pathways, a pair of half-moon fountains, a grape arbor, terraces, flowering trees, a walled garden, and an herb bed. Later, they moved a bit further south to the village of

Bronxville Bronxville is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States, located approximately north of Midtown Manhattan. It is part of the Adminis ...

, where she designed Station Plaza and founded a local Working Gardeners Club (1925). She designed residential gardens across the county; her philosophy, influenced by the aesthetic of British gardener

Gertrude Jekyll Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British Horticulture, horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United Sta ...

, was to create something "formal in design but most informal in execution". Wilder wrote ten books about her experiences as a gardener that were popular for offering clear, explicit advice rather than flowery nature writing. She also wrote for newspapers and gardening and shelter magazines such as ''Horticulture'', ''House & Garden'', and the ''New York Times''. In particular, she took up the challenge of adapting Jekyll's aesthetic—developed for a substantially different climate and range of plant species—to the needs of American gardeners. The title of her second book, ''Colour in My Garden'', deliberately echoes Jekyll's influential 1908 book ''Colour in the Flower Garden''. Wilder's "socio-botanical commentaries"—as author

Michael Pollan Michael Kevin Pollan (; born February 6, 1955) is an American journalist who is a professor and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism and the ...

termed them—captured the spirit of a moment in America when suburban gardening and its attendant forms of landscape design were on the rise and an older, more formal style of large estate garden was in decline. A ''New York Times'' editor called her a Romantic, but one "with a strong vein of scientific curiosity that she exercised on a domestic scale.” Another ''New York Times'' editor, after noting that she was conversant with both classic British and recent American horticultural literature, praised her for the sharpness of her field observations. Her books—especially ''Colour in My Garden''—are now considered classics, and in 2001 some were reissued as a four-volume collection, ''The Louise Beebe Wilder Gardener’s Library: Four Classic Books by America’s Greatest Garden Writer''. Wilder also served on the board of the

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

. Walter Wilder died by suicide in 1934. Wilder died April 20, 1938.

Awards

She was honored with the

Garden Club of America The Garden Club of America is a nonprofit organization made up of around 18,000 club members and 200 local garden clubs around the United States. Founded in 1913, by Elizabeth Price Martin and Ernestine Abercrombie Goodman, it promotes the recordi ...

's Gold Medal for Horticultural Achievement in 1937.

Publications

*''My Garden'' (1916) *''Colour in My Garden'' (1918; limited edition of 1500 with color plates by artist Anna Winegar) *''Adventures in My Garden and Rock Garden'' (1923) *''Pleasures and Problems of a Rock Garden'' (1928) *''Adventures in a Suburban Garden'' (1931) *''The Fragrant Path'' (1932) *''The Rock Garden'' (1933) *''What Happens in My Garden'' (1935) *''Adventures with Hardy Bulbs'' (1936) *''The Garden in Color'' (1937)

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilder, Louise Beebe 1878 births 1938 deaths American garden writers American horticulturists Writers from Baltimore