Gertrude Jekyll (1892-1962)

Painter, Gardener and Garden Designer

Gertrude Jekyll was trained as a painter but was forced to abandon this artistic activity due to an eye complaint. Always very interested in creating gardens, she now furthered her talent as a garden designer. She had a fine instinct for shades of colour, which she now put to strategic use when planning herbaceous gardens.

Gertrude Jekyll was one of the first people to suggest creating single-coloured flowerbeds and borders alongside paths. Her use of herbaceous plants became a model for many garden designers. In 1881, she wrote her first article in “The Garden” and 1.000 different publications on the subject followed throughout her life. In 1930, shortly before her death, she penned 43 articles for “Gardening Illustrated”.

She met the young architect Edwin Lutyens (1869 - 1944) in 1889 and a fruitful collaboration between architect and garden designer began. In the "Lutyens-Jekyll” garden, hardy groundcovers grew over large areas within a classical architectural setting of steps and balustrades. The combination of strict and unconstrained forms – redbrick paths, livened up by billowing borders, lilies, lupines, delphiniums and lavender – contrasted strongly with the extremely strict layout of flowerbeds found in the previous generation from the Victorian age. This new, natural style has defined the “English Garden” up to the modern day.

Lutyens also designed (1896) Munstead Wood, Gertrude Jekyll’s house in Surrey, which she describes in her books "Wood and Garden" (1899) und “Home and Garden” (1900). One of her most famous gardens is Hestercombe in Somerset.

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