Jekyll, Gertrude (1843–1932). English garden-designer and writer. She is particularly remembered for her books on horticulture (she was profoundly influenced by William
Robinson) and for the various gardens she planned with
Lutyens (whom she first met in 1889, and was instrumental in introducing the budding architect to his first clients). Lutyens designed Munstead Wood, Surrey (1896–9), for her, where, prompted by her
Arts-and-Crafts background (she knew
Ruskin), she laid out a cottage-style garden of old-fash-ioned flowers, doing away with carpet-bed-ding, topiary-work, box-edging, and so on, in favour of a completely informal approach. She made the herbaceous border famous, and she herself became a household name, not least through her influential
Wood and Garden (1899— illustrated with her own photographs). She designed some 300 gardens, about 100 of them with Lutyens (good examples of which were Deanery Garden, Sonning, Berks. (1899–1901), Orchards, Munstead, near Godalming, Surrey (1897–9), and Hestercombe, Taunton, Som. (1903–6) ). One of her best gardens, designed independently of Lutyens, was Barrington Court, Som. (1916–17).
Bibliography
Bisgrove (1992);
J. Brown (1982, 1986, 1996);
Journal of Garden History, ii/3 (July–Sept. 1982), 285–92;
Tooley (ed.) (1994)
