Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll – Life, Vision, and Legacy of a Garden Artist

Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) was a pioneering British garden designer, writer, artist, and horticulturist. She created over 400 gardens, authored influential texts on planting and color, and shaped the language of garden aesthetics well into the 20th century.

Introduction

Gertrude Jekyll was not simply a gardener — she was an artist of the living kind. Born on November 29, 1843, and passing on December 8, 1932, her life spanned the Victorian era, the rise of the Arts & Crafts movement, and a flowering of public interest in garden design. Through over 400 gardens, more than a thousand articles, and a dozen major books, she transformed how people conceive of planting, color, texture, and the emotional dimension of gardens. She is remembered today as one of the most influential figures in garden design in Britain, Europe, and the United States.

Early Life and Family

Gertrude Jekyll was born in Mayfair, London, the fifth of seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll (a Grenadier Guards officer) and Julia Hammersley. Bramley House in Surrey, a more rural setting that would later foster Gertrude’s lifelong affinity for the countryside.

Her siblings included Walter Jekyll, who later became a cleric and writer (and famously friend to Robert Louis Stevenson).

Gertrude never married and had no children, devoting her life wholly to her creative, horticultural, and literary pursuits.

Education, Artistic Roots & Shift to Gardening

From a young age, Jekyll showed artistic talent. She studied at the South Kensington School of Art, immersing herself in painting, drawing, and color theory.

Travel also shaped her sensibility: she spent time abroad in Greece, Turkey, and the Mediterranean, studying architectural and garden forms.

In the early 1890s, deteriorating eyesight curtailed her ambitions in painting, prompting her to turn more fully to gardening and design as an alternative artistic outlet.

She brought to horticulture the sensibility of an artist: color harmonies, texture contrasts, compositions in space, and a painter’s eye for depth and perspective.

Career & Major Contributions

Garden Design and Collaborations

Beginning around 1881, Jekyll worked on gardens around Munstead House, which would later become her home, Munstead Wood. over 400 gardens in Britain, Europe, and the U.S.

A key collaborator was the architect Edwin Lutyens. Their partnership combined his architectural framework with her planting “softening” — he provided the structural bones (walls, paths, terraces), she provided the living decoration. Some notable gardens and commissions include:

• Hestercombe Gardens (Somerset) — one of her restored designs.

• Upton Grey, Hampshire — manor gardens she designed, later restored.

• Lindisfarne Castle gardens, Northumberland.

• The Munstead Wood garden itself remains a central legacy.

Many of her designs emphasized the “hardy border” — mixed perennial plantings arranged by color and texture to give a painterly effect through seasons.

She deliberately embraced a “natural” aesthetic rather than rigid, formal fashion; she favored schemes that appeared relaxed, though carefully composed.

Writing & Thought Leadership

Jekyll was prolific in print. She wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and The Garden. She also authored around a dozen major books, including:

• Wood and Garden (1899)

• Home and Garden (1900)

• Colour in the Flower Garden (1908) / Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden

• Wall and Water Gardens (1902)

• Old West Surrey (1904), which also documented aspects of rural life and local vernacular arts.

Through her writing, she codified principles of color harmony, planting sequences, and the emotional character of gardens. Her texts remain reference works in garden theory.

Honors & Recognition

• Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour (1897)

• Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial Medal (1929)

• George Robert White Medal of Honor, Massachusetts Horticultural Society (1929)

These awards acknowledge her outstanding contribution to horticulture and garden design.

Historical & Cultural Context

Jekyll worked during a time when the Arts & Crafts movement was reshaping views of beauty, craftsmanship, and the integration of art with everyday life. Her gardens often reflected the same sensibility that guided the movement: the unity of design, the value of traditional workmanship, and a reverence for natural harmony.

She came into prominence when public interest in gardens, country estates, and domestic horticulture was growing in Britain and beyond. Her approach helped move garden design beyond mere horticultural layout into the realm of aesthetic expression.

Her emphasis on seasonal succession, plant combinations, and the painterly effect of planting influenced generations of landscape architects and garden designers in the 20th century.

Personality, Approach & Philosophy

Jekyll’s temperament combined discipline, artistic sensibility, and a deep curiosity for nature. She believed that gardens should not be static displays but evolving living works that change with seasons.

Color theory was central to her philosophy: she treated plants as pigments on a palette, arranging warm and cool tones in harmony.

She also valued the visitor’s experience — designing sight lines, transitions in space, and “borrowed scenery” (using distant landscape views as part of garden context).

Her life showed resiliency in adapting from visual art (blocked by failing eyesight) into a related but distinct field (gardening), where her visual sensibility could express itself in living form.

Famous Quotes & Aphorisms

While Jekyll was more known for her designs and prose than for pithy quotations, a few remarks reflect her spirit:

• “A garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.”

• “The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.”

• “Colour is a means of enjoying the contrasts and harmonies of the plant world.”

These encapsulate her belief that gardening is both eternal craft and aesthetic dialogue.

Legacy & Influence

Gertrude Jekyll’s influence continues strongly:

• Her gardens, where preserved or restored, are still visited (e.g. Hestercombe, Munstead Wood, Upton Grey).

• Her home Munstead Wood was recently acquired by the National Trust to preserve her legacy.

• Her writings remain in print and are studied by garden designers, horticulturists, and enthusiasts.

• The ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ rose, a well-loved English rose variety, was named in her honor.

• Her ideas contributed to the notion that gardens are an art form, influencing modern landscape architecture and planting design.

Lessons from Gertrude Jekyll

1. Artistic perception transforms ordinary spaces
   Jekyll shows that seeing plants as strokes of color and texture can elevate a garden into living art.

2. Adversity can redirect creative gifts
   When her eyesight declined, she shifted focus and found a new medium for expression.

3. Blend structure with softness
   Her collaborations with architects teach the value of combining strong architectural frames with organic planting.

4. Gardens are dynamic and evolving
   Designing for seasonal progression, transitions, and experience matters more than static perfection.

5. Persist in curiosity and experimentation
   In hundreds of projects, she continuously refined her ideas, tested new plants, and wrote to share her learning.

Conclusion

Gertrude Jekyll’s life exemplifies how passion, artistry, and botanical knowledge can combine to leave a legacy that transcends time. Her gardens and her words continue to inspire those who believe that the earth is not just functional, but expressive — that landscapes speak, color matters, and beauty, like gardening, is a dialogue between human design and nature’s own unfolding.