Famous Women Gardeners

Lesson 6: The Final Verdict and Elizabeth von Arnim

During this final class we will sum up the importance of the women gardeners from the 19th century into our times. Through their written literature and examples of their garden designs, we have learned of the enormous effect of the revolution that took place in the garden worlds of the 20th century.

We will use Elizabeth von Arnim and her book "Elizabeth and her German Garden" both as an example of the beginning of this change in attitude towards women in the garden, and for the enjoyment of reading a delightful book.

Will the soft, romantic garden still be in vogue in the coming years? At the huge garden exhibitions, such as the Chelsea garden Show, in the year 2000, it would seem the trend to create "architectural gardens" is becoming fashionable.

I hope you will have bought or borrowed some of the suggested books.

Some questions we can ask ourselves:

Will the future gardeners look to the books and learn from visiting the gardens of these creative women?

Has our changed life style forced us to create more "simple" landscapes?

Is the future to be "architectural" gardens?

What about the famous women gardeners of today?

Elizabeth von Arnim and Summing Up

ELIZABETH VON ARNIM b 1866 - d 1941

Elizabeth was born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney, Australia but spent her childhood in England. In 1889 her father, Henry Beauchamp went on holiday in Italy, taking his youngest daughter, May who was 23, with him. He expected his wife would be joining them in a week's time and he hoped that would be so, as he liked to wonder off exploring and doing serious sight seeing on his own. He hated to have to chaperone his daughter, preferring to leave the women to their own devices. Mary, called May by her family, was an intelligent young woman. She had won prizes for History and a prize for organ playing from the Royal College of Music.

May accompanied him on a whirl wind sightseeing tour of the main cities of Italy. May, who must have indeed been a good muscian, had been given an inroduction letter to a noted Roman muscian, with whom they spent the whole evening. This was to prove an important evening. Just before they retired, a gentleman arrived, dressed for a ball at the Quirinal palace. His name was Graf henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Count who was travelling to get over the deaths of his wife and child. He was attracted to May and one month later, after hearing her play the organ in the American Church in Rome, he decided to ask her to marry him. Von Arnim set about to court May by chasing her to Switzerland and Germany. By the end of July they were engaged to be married. Despite the fast courtship, the marriage did not take place until the following February in London, because von Arnim insisted that his wife to be was proficient in speaking German so she would be able to "handle the servants."

At first, May [who was now to be known as Elizabeth] the new bride, did not mind mixing in the high society of Berlin and attending the parties of the rich Berliners. But it was not long before she became bored and restless. In 1896, that is five years after marriage and after two children were born, she accompanied her husband on one of his regular visits to his enormous country estate, ninety miles north of Berlin. She found this "country home" consisted of a 17th century castle that was once a convent and had been unoccupied for the last twenty-five years. This was another case of love at first sight, not with the castle which she always rather disliked but, Elizabeth on seeing the large, neglected and rambling garden, knew this was where she wanted to live. With great difficulty, she persuaded von Arnim [a city dweller by nature] to at least live there during the summer time.

The first book, written by Elizabeth, "Elizabeth and Her German Garden", was published annonymously two years later and it became very popular, having eleven reprints in the first year, and the twenty-first reprint in 1899. Reviews were not all complimentary, one reviewer writing "even the amateur gardener will be disappointed, for he will find therein no tips as to the best method of grafting apples or of destroying vermin."

The book, in the beginnig, describes her absolute delight of spending her first few weeks in the garden. She was alone there for the months of April and June, her husband believing she was supervising the painting and wall papering in the dishevelled house. But she was not attending to these domesticities: every daylight hour was spent in the wild garden. She discovered bird cherries, lilacs, wild flowers and four huge clumps of silvery-pink paeonies. She made the servants bring her meals of salad, bread and tea [with an occasional tiny pigeon] to her in the garden. The nights were spent alone in the cold house.

This is how she begins her book "Elizabeth and her German Garden":

"May 7th - I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower...

This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much less the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to those vast eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not sound pretty; but the greater part of my Spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves. I am always happy, out of doors be it understood, for indoors there are servants and furniture".

The book, at times rather oddly described as a "novel", was certainly a different piece of work. One critic declared that Elizabeth was really a man! Elizabeth's newfound joy, her happiness and excitement that she could change the wilderness into a garden and her fascination with nature, are all written with a lyrical and romantic style. The enthusiasm is mixed with a self-confessed lack of knowledge: she buys ten pounds of ipomae seeds. This she threw everywhere "round nearly every tree, and waited in great agitation for the promised paradise to appear. It did not, and I learned my first lesson".

The other theme that comes through her writing is the wonderful feeling of freedom she was experiencing. She was ecstatic not to be under the influence of her Prussian autocratic husband and his demands that she attend to "wifely chores and duties". She could do what she liked, sleep, read and garden, be silent and enjoy the solitude and start to recognize her own determination to be something more than a German housewife and mother.

During these first weeks of solitary delight Elizabeth writes "How happy I was!! I don't remember any time quite so perfect since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with my sugar and bread and butter onto a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies. The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm, but I love the dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then".

Elizath's paradise was soon to be interrupted, as six weeks later her husband returned. "Then he appeared suddenly who has the right to appear when and how he will and rebuked me for never having written....I took him round the garden along the new paths I had made, and showed him the acacia and lilac glories, and he said that it was the purest selishness to enjoy myself when neither he nor the offspring were with me, and the lilacs wanted thorough pruning. I tried to appease him by offering him the whole of my salad and toast supper which stood ready at the foot of the little verandah steps when we came back, but the Man of Wrath [now her husband is called this throughout the book] said he would "go straight back to the neglected family".

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