Gertrude Jekyll Biography Quotes 8 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Gertrude Jekyll (1843, 1932) emerged as one of the defining figures of British garden design. Born in London into a well-to-do family, she grew up in a milieu that valued naval service, travel, and the arts; her father served in the Royal Navy, and the children were encouraged to cultivate wide interests. From an early age, she showed unusual visual sensitivity and manual skill. She studied at the South Kensington School of Art, where rigorous training in drawing, color, and craft introduced her to the ideals of John Ruskin and, later, to the social and aesthetic ambitions of William Morris. That grounding in the arts, and a keen eye sharpened by close observation, would power everything she later did in horticulture.

From Art to Gardens
Jekyll began her career as an artist and craftswoman, experimenting with metalwork, embroidery, and interior decoration. Over time, as her eyesight grew less reliable for fine studio work, she shifted her creative focus from the canvas and workshop to the living medium of plants. Gardening, for her, became a synthesis of painterly color, sculptural form, and the humane, vernacular spirit celebrated by the Arts and Crafts movement. She brought an artist's discipline to plant selection and arrangement, treating borders like orchestrations of tone, texture, and seasonal rhythm.

Munstead Wood and a Working Nursery
Settling in Surrey, Jekyll established herself at Munstead Wood, where she developed her own garden and ran a productive nursery. The garden became her laboratory and showroom: a place to test hardy perennials, refine color progressions, and demonstrate how shrubs, climbers, bulbs, and herbaceous plants could be built into layered, lasting compositions. Munstead Wood also supplied plants for her commissions, allowing her to specify with unusual exactness and to guarantee quality and continuity over years of work.

Collaboration with Edwin Lutyens
Her most celebrated professional relationship was with the architect Edwin Lutyens. They met when Lutyens was still very young, and the rapport was immediate and profound. He brought disciplined geometry, subtle proportion, and enduring materials; she brought the living architecture of planting. Together they developed a language in which house and garden were conceived as one work of art. Across more than a hundred projects, they demonstrated how formal stone terraces, steps, and pools could be softened and enriched by drifts of perennials and shrubs. Notable collaborations included Hestercombe in Somerset, where structured walks and terraces met Jekyll's calibrated planting, and commissions where Lutyens's architecture, from refined country houses to more rugged compositions, found its full expression in her planting schemes. The affection and respect between them shaped both careers, and their shared patrons often came through the cultural orbit of Country Life.

Ideas, Writings, and the Country Life Circle
Jekyll was as influential with her pen as with her trowel. She wrote prolifically for magazines, especially Country Life, whose founder and editor, Edward Hudson, championed the Arts and Crafts ideal and frequently published her articles and photographs. Through this platform she reached a wide audience, explaining practical methods and aesthetic principles with calm authority and a delight in detail. Her books, among them Wood and Garden, Home and Garden, Wall and Water Gardens, Roses for English Gardens (with rosarian Edward Mawley), and Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, codified her approach: the careful balancing of color, the use of texture and leaf form, the importance of sequence and succession, and the dismissal of transient fashion in favor of lasting harmony.

Design Philosophy and Practice
Jekyll's gardens advanced a humane alternative to the high-Victorian taste for carpet bedding. She favored hardy perennials massed in "drifts", shrubs for structure, and color planned in long views and close vignettes. She selected plants for their foliage as much as their flowers, understanding that a garden must be beautiful for many months, not just at a single peak. Silvers and greys could cool a border; hot colors could be modulated by blues and whites; rough stone and clipped yew could steady a riot of summer bloom. She urged gardeners to consider soil, aspect, and local character and to craft designs that belonged to their place.

Peers, Patrons, and a Wider Network
Jekyll stood at the center of a network that shaped gardening in Britain and beyond. She was in lively dialogue with William Robinson, the influential proponent of the "wild garden", and often contributed to his journal, The Garden. She knew and respected the ideals of William Morris and John Ruskin, translating their principles into horticultural practice. Among fellow plantspeople and patrons, she intersected with Ellen Willmott, a formidable gardener and collector, and with clients who helped make her work visible to a broad public. She also influenced amateur and professional gardeners alike, including those who developed great gardens of the early twentieth century; the work of figures such as Lawrence Johnston at Hidcote drew on the compositional lessons she aired so generously in print. In her family circle, her brother Walter Jekyll was a notable figure; his friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson is remembered in literary history, but for Gertrude he was also part of a family culture that valued intellect and art.

Photography, Craft, and Regional Memory
Beyond planting, Jekyll preserved the vernacular life of her region through writing and photography. In Old West Surrey she recorded cottages, tools, folkways, and local crafts at a moment when rural traditions were being transformed. Her lens and prose were sympathetic and exact, combining the archivist's care with the artist's sensibility. The same respect for local character shaped her gardens, which often echoed nearby hedgerows, woodlands, and field patterns.

Major Works and Enduring Sites
The roll of gardens associated with Jekyll is long and varied, ranging from intimate cottage plots to large country houses. Projects with Lutyens remain the most celebrated, and many of these sites have seen restoration efforts that recover her intentions: strong structure, romantic planting, and close attention to materials. Hestercombe's terraces demonstrate her mastery of color in formal settings. At Castle Drogo in Devon, the austere architecture found relief in her thoughtful planting. On Lindisfarne, a small walled garden shows how her principles could be distilled into a compact, resilient design responsive to place.

Character and Working Method
Colleagues and clients remembered Jekyll for practical intelligence enlivened by humor and patience. She blended strong opinions with generosity, providing planting lists, maintenance notes, and nursery-grown plants so gardens could mature as planned. She worked through observation and iteration, always testing combinations at Munstead Wood before deploying them elsewhere. Her dislike of fleeting novelty did not make her rigid; rather, she prized fitness, longevity, and the quiet excitement that comes from plants well matched to their setting.

Later Years and Legacy
Jekyll never married and devoted her long life to work. Even as her eyesight declined, she continued to write and advise, distilling decades of experiment into clear guidance for ordinary gardeners. She died in 1932 in Surrey, leaving behind a body of designs, photographs, and books that continued to shape taste. A rose cultivar named in her honor later became familiar in gardens worldwide, a sign of the affection and respect in which she is held.

Her legacy is not a signature motif so much as a way of seeing. She taught that a garden could be both art and habitat: practical, sensuous, and deeply rooted in its place. Through her partnership with Edwin Lutyens, her friendships with figures such as William Robinson, and her publishing alliance with Edward Hudson, she placed the English garden at the heart of a broader cultural renewal. The lessons she championed, regarding structure, succession, proportion, and the ethics of craft, remain central to garden design today.

Our collection contains 8 quotes who is written by Gertrude, under the main topics: Wisdom - Learning - Nature - Work Ethic.