Lesson 1: GERTRUDE JEKYLL, the first of our lady gardeners

Miss Jekyll is the first woman gardener of the four we will study. Her wonderful style and new philosophies towards garden creation began in the 19th Century and have lasted until the present day.

First experimented in the family garden in Wargrave, Berkshire.

We learn of her attendance at the School of Art at South Kensington and her blossoming as an artist in that exciting period.

Miss Jekyll created her second garden at Munstead House. It became obvious during this period that her greatest interest in life was going to be in horticulture.

The woodland gardens she landscaped started to draw the interest of horticulturists such as William Robinson. This lead to her first printed articles.

"Gardener's Testament" was written but not compiled until after her death. In 1897 she moved to Munstead Wood, designed by Edwin Luytens. We will discuss this long relationship.

GERTRUDE JEKYLL

Born 1843 - died 1932

"It is no use asking me or anyone else how to dig ...
Better to go and watch a man digging, and then take a spade and try to do it."
Gertrude Jekyll, c.1896





I am going to call our gardeners by their first name but after looking at her photos, I do not think I should shorten Miss Jekyll's Christian name to Gert! I feel the lady is quite prim. I have some large graphics at the end of the article. I hope you can read the text as they are downloading

EARLY LIFE

Gertrude had a typical Victorian upbringing, living most of her life with her four brothers and one very much older sister, in a large rented home in Surrey. She showed a good intellect at an early age, making her own little garden when eight years old and spent many hours roaming alone in the surrounding countryside. She became very accomplished in the pursuits of a well bought up Victorian girl, excelling in embroidery, piano-playing and painting in water colours. After all, these hobbies could be done at night when the light had left the gardens of the Surrey woods.

How did this lady become the gardener that was to change attitudes to garden landscaping? The effect of her new garden philosophy is still evident in our gardens, large and small, throughout the world, even now in the twenty-first century.





The first "conditioning" of Gertrude's life came about in 1861. She enrolled in the School of Art at South Kensington, surely a brave move for a young girl of eighteen, brought up in a lonely life and in the secluded atmosphere of country Surrey. Her father was a keen scientist and both he and mother were accomplished musicians, who could count among their friends many of the leaders of the arts and science movements, innovators like William Morris, John Ruskin, George Watts and Michael Faraday. Through her parents's friends, and particularly through Sir Charles Newton, Keeper of Antiquities in the British Museum and his artist wife Mary, Gertrude's world was expanded and she joined intellectual and artistic circles very naturally.

Exciting changes were happening in the last decades of the 19th century. England was experiencing enormous growth brought about by industry and technology. Gertrude would have taken part in stimulating discussions on music, painting, architecture and philosophy; a wonderful time for a blossoming artist to experience.









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