Gertrude Jekyll - Citizendia

Restored Gertrude Jekyll border at Manor House, Upton Grey, Hampshire. ^[1]

Gertrude Jekyll (November 29, 1843 – December 8, 1932), (pronounced JEE-kul, to rhyme with "treacle") was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. Events 1777 - San Jose California, is founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe Year 1843 ( MDCCCXLIII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Common Events 1609 - Biblioteca Ambrosiana opens its reading room the second public library of Europe. Year 1932 ( MCMXXXII) was a Leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country Life is a British weekly Magazine. It covers the pleasures and joys of Rural life as well as the concerns of rural people ^[2]

Gertrude Jekyll was born at 2 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, the fifth of the seven children of Captain Edward JH Jekyll, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Julia Hammersley. Mayfair is an area of central London, England, within the City of Westminster. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. The Grenadier Guards (GREN GDS is the most senior Regiment of the Guards Division of the British Army, and as such is the most senior regiment of infantry Her younger brother, the Reverend Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who borrowed the family name for his famous novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850–3 December 1894 was a Scottish novelist poet and travel writer, and a representative of Neo-romanticism in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a Novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1886 In 1848 her family left London and moved to Bramley House in Surrey where Jekyll spent her formative years. Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties.

Jekyll should be more correctly categorized as a planter than as a "designer". She did indeed design, but did it through her plantings rather than traditional design aspects. She was one half of one of the most influential and historical partnerships of the Arts and Crafts movement, thanks to her association with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, for whose projects she created numerous landscapes, and by whom her home Munstead Wood was designed. The Arts and Crafts Movement was a British, Canadian, and American Aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, OM, KCIE, PRA, FRIBA, LLD ( 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944 ^[3] (In 1900, Lutyens and Jekyll's brother Herbert designed the British Pavilion for the Paris Exposition. ) Jekyll is not remembered for her outstanding designs but instead for her subtle, painterly approach to the arrangement of the gardens she created, particularly her "hardy flower borders" (not herbaceous borders). Her work is known for its radiant colour and the brush-like strokes of her plantings; it is suggested by some that the Impressionistic-style schemes may have been due to Jekyll's deteriorating eyesight, which largely put an end to her career as a painter and watercolourist.

Jekyll was one of the first of her profession to take into account the colour, texture, and experience of gardens as the prominent authorities in her designs, and she was a life-long fan of plants of all genres. Her theory of how to design with colour was influenced by painter JMW Turner and by Impressionism. Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 &ndash 19 December 1851 was an English Romantic landscape painter, Watercolourist and Impressionism was a 19th-century Art movement that began as a loose association of Paris -based Artists exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s Later in life, Jekyll collected and contributed a vast array of plants solely for the purpose of preservation to numerous institutions across Britain. This pure passion for gardening was started at South Kensington School of Art (later the RCA),^[4] where she fell in love with the creative art of planting, and even more specifically, gardening. The Royal College of Art ( RCA) is a University in London, England. At the time of her death, she had designed over 400 gardens in Britain, Europe and even a few in North America. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located All were known for their meticulous attention to colour detail, and the lack of consideration to fads of the day like the angular modernist gardens that were popular, to a degree, in England and France in the 1920s. The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the " Jazz Age " or the " Roaring Twenties " when speaking about the United States and Canada This characteristic of "going against the grain" is a large part of the reason that Jekyll is remembered today.

Jekyll was not only an influential garden designer, but is also known for her prolific writing. She penned over fifteen books, ranging from Wood and Garden and her most famous book Colour in the Flower Garden, to memoirs of her youth. Jekyll did not want to limit her influence to teaching the practice of gardening, but to take it a step further to the quiet study of gardening and the plants themselves. ^[5]

Jekyll later returned to her childhood home in the village of Bramley, Surrey to design a garden in Snowdenham Lane called Millmead. Bramley is a village and Civil parish about three miles south of Guildford in the Borough of Waverley in Surrey, south east England

She was also interested in traditional cottage furnishings and rural crafts, and concerned that they were disappearing. Her book Old West Surrey (1904) records many aspects of 19th century country life, with over 300 photographs taken by Jekyll.

She is buried in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, Busbridge, Godalming next to her brother. Godalming is a town in the Waverley district of the county of Surrey, England, seven kilometres (four miles south of Guildford. The monument was designed by Lutyens.

References

^ Border 5, http://www.gertrudejekyllgarden.co.uk/jekyllsplans.htm
^ Bisgrove, Richard. The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006.
^ Tankard, Judith B. and Martin A. Wood. Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood. Bramley Books, 1998.
^ About Gertrude Jekyll. Retrieved on 2007-12-19. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 324 - Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor.
^ Wood, Martin. The Unknown Gertrude Jekyll. London: Frances Lincoln, 2006.

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