Formal Gardens behind Tintinhull House - geograph

Phyllis Emily Reiss born Phyllis Emily Lucas (3 3October 1886 – 1961) was a British garden designer noted for her work at her own

Tintinhull Garden Tintinhull Garden, located in Tintinhull, near Yeovil in the English county of Somerset, is a small (less than an acre) 20th century garden surrounding a 17th-century Grade I listed house. The property is in the ownership of the National Trust. ...

, and

Montacute House Montacute House is a late Elizabethan era, Elizabethan mansion in Montacute, South Somerset, England. An example of English architecture created during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic architecture, Gothic to the more Classica ...

Life

Reiss was born in

Berkhamsted Berkhamsted ( ) is a historic market town in Hertfordshire, England, in the River Bulbourne, Bulbourne valley, north-west of London. The town is a Civil parishes in England, civil parish with a town council within the borough of Dacorum which ...

in Hertfordshire. Her parents were Edith Hamilton (born Crake) and Colonel Alfred George Lucas. Her father had been in the army and he served as

High Sheriff of Suffolk This is a list of Sheriffs and High Sheriffs of Suffolk. The Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown and is appointed annually (in March) by the Crown. The Sheriff was originally the principal law enforcement officer in the county a ...

in 1904 and well as a mayor of Lowestoft. They had a substantial home at Dowdeswell Manor in the Cotswolds near to Hidcote Manor Gardens. In 1933 Reiss and her husband, Capt. F. E. Reiss, bought Tintinhull House and Garden. The garden layout had been developed by Dr. Price who had created triangular and diamond-shaped flagstone paths and ornamental domes of

box A box (plural: boxes) is a container with rigid sides used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides (typically rectangular prisms). Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or v ...

were planted in the 1920s. The existing early landscaping was expanded by Reiss starting in 1933 in an

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, 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 ...

" Hidcote" style. The garden was separated into "rooms" by yew hedges and walls. The different areas included Eagle Court, Middle Garden, Fountain Garden and Pool Garden. The pool garden was their only additional area and it was created on the site of a former tennis court. This pool garden was a memorial to a nephew who had lost his life during the war above

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

. A painting of him, Michael Lucas, is at Tintinhull. In 1954 Reiss gave the house and garden to the National Trust, but she continued to live in the house and care for the garden.

Death and legacy

Reiss died in 1961 and the National Trust continue to look after the property. The house's later tenants included the

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 and writer

Penelope Hobhouse Penelope Hobhouse MBE (née Chichester-Clark; born 20 November 1929) is a British garden writer, designer, lecturer and television presenter. Early life Born into an Anglo-Irish family in Moyola Park, Castledawson, she is the daughter of Ja ...

and her husband Prof John Malins from 1980 to 1993. Reiss's carefree planting was said to have had a strong influence of Hobhouse as well as Dame

Sylvia Crowe Dame Sylvia Crowe, DBE (15 September 1901 – 30 June 1997) was an English landscape architect and garden designer.Hal Moggridge"Crowe, Dame Sylvia" (1901–1997) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; access ...

and the American born designer Lanning Roper.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reiss, Phyllis 1886 births 1961 deaths English landscape and garden designers British horticulturists People from Berkhamsted