Gertrude Jekyll - a short history 1843-1932

Artist, craftswoman and author, she was among the greatest of English gardeners and home makers. She was a woman ahead of her time – a pioneer and inspiration to generations of landscape architects.

Gertrude was born in London in 1843 into a musically gifted and well-connected family, the forth of six children. When she was five, they moved to Bramley House in rural Surrey. Tutored at home, she enjoyed a well-rounded, liberal education, which included scientific experimentation in her father’s workshop and practical gardening.

From 1861, she attended Kensington School of Art where she studied design and theory of colour, as well as painting. She became involved with the Arts and Crafts Movement, which William Morris had founded, and applied its soul-driven philosophy to her embroidery patterns and tapestries. She also worked in metal and wood and became a skilful photographer.

As her eyesight deteriorated, because of myopia, gardening became the main outlet for her creative talents. This took the form of making, designing, advising and writing on gardens, both large and small. Gertrude saw borders as her canvas and flowers as her medium and is best remembered for her large individually-coloured herbaceous borders such as her ‘gold’ borders created out of shades of yellow and orange.

The family had moved to Berkshire in 1868 but moved back to Munstead in Surrey on the death of her father in 1876. After meeting William Robinson, editor of The Garden; she became a contributor to the magazine and to Robinson’s influential book The English Flower Garden, published in 1883. In 1899, Gertrude wrote Wood and Garden the first of her many books on gardening; beautifully written and illustrated, full of practical advice, they remain best sellers to this day in modern editions.

Gertrude worked closely with several architects, notably Sir Edwin Lutyens whom she met in 1889 when she was 45 and he 26. Their first project together was Gertrude’s own home, Munstead Wood; they went on to collaborate on over 100 gardens. Most of her 350 gardens have been lost, but a few, notably Upton Grey and Hestercombe, have been wholly or partly restored. By the 1920s Lutyens was at the height of his career; Gertrude remained active into her eighties, advising Lutyens on aspects of his greatest project, New Delhi.

On December 8th 1932 Gertrude died peacefully and was buried next to her brother Herbert, at Busbridge Church, in a grave designed for the family.

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