Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Jekyll, Gertrude, 1843-1932
- Abstract:
- Contains records related to the life and career of landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) who practiced primarily in England. Documents Jekyll's collaborative relationships with architectcs, especially Edwin Lutyens, through project records. Records include correspondence, photographs, drawings, and albums.
- Extent:
- 183 Digital objects: 183 digital images and 33 Linear Feet: 2 boxes, 1 half box, 10 flat file drawers, 17 reels of microfilm, 6 photograph albums
- Language:
- English .
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Gertrude Jekyll Collection, (1955-1), Environmental Design Archives. College of Environmental Design. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California
Background
- Scope and content:
-
Personal Papers and Project Records. The personal papers contain Jekyll's photograph albums (ca. 1888-1914). There are six volumes of photographs, which fall into broad subject categories: studies of landscapes, gardens, floral arts, plants and rural subjects, as well as portraits. The greatest number of photographs represent Jekyll's own garden at Munstead Wood, which she documented from 1888 until 1914. These six albums (of an original eleven) were purchased by Agnes Milliken in 1948 and donated to the Reef Point Gardens Library.
The project records were cataloged and arranged chronologically while part of the Reef Point Gardens Library. Although textual records have been separated from the oversize drawing files, both subseries maintain their chronological order. These project records have been indexed by estate name, client name, and geographic location (see card file in the Environmental Design Archives). A microfilm of this material is also available.
The Gertrude Jekyll collection was part of a larger donation made by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand to Berkeley in 1955 after the dissolution of her own study center, Reef Point Gardens, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Farrand acquired the collection in 1940 by way of the Royal Horticultural Society's Red Cross Sale. The collection documents most, but not all, of Jekyll's projects. Unfortunately material on some of the better known projects, such as Abbotswood, Deanery Garden, and Orchards are missing or incomplete, and may have been lost or sold in the intervening years between Jekyll's death in 1932 and Farrand's acquisition of Jekyll's records
- Biographical / historical:
-
Gertrude Jekyll was one of the twentieth century's most important British landscape designers and writers. In her youth Jekyll was a painter, but poor eyesight forced her to choose another career. She loved the cottage garden and reinterpereted it in many medium- and small-scale landscapes in Edwardian England. In the course of her career, Jekyll consulted on approximately 350 gardens in England and abroad.
Jekyll was influenced substantially by the Anglo-Irish author William Robinson, and contributed many articles to his magazine The Garden, serving as its joint editor for a while. She also wrote for the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society and for Country Life. A prolific writer, Jekyll published over 1,000 articles and 13 books in her lifetime. Much of her design approach was developed during visits to the Austrian Tyrol and the Swiss Alps, as well as the Mediterranean. Her writing helped to popularize her ideas on "controlled" wildness and herbaceous borders. She was extremely influential during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in opening up the question of what a garden should be.
Jekyll is often referred to in conjunction with Sir Edwin Lutyens, an architect with whom she collaborated on over 100 gardens. One of their most well-known collaborations is Hestercombe in Somerset. A "Lutyens house with a Jekyll garden," a phrase denoting the very best in design, became an important contribution to the English way of life.
For the last half of her career (after the age of 65), Jekyll did not leave her home town of Surrey, and therefore did not visit many of the garden sites that she designed. To consult on gardens, she had clients and architects send her plans and even soil samples. Gertrude Jekyll died in December, 1932.
Sources:
Bisgrove, Richard. "The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll." London: Frances Lincoln,1992.
Brown, Jane. "Miss Gertrude Jekyll 1843-1932, Gardener." London: Architectural Association, 1981.
Brown, Jane. "Gardens of a Golden Afternoon." London: Allen Lane,1982.
Mann, William A. "Landscape Architecture: An Illustrated History in Timelines, Site Plans, and Biography." New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1993.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Collection is open for research.
- Terms of access:
-
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the Curator.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Gertrude Jekyll Collection, (1955-1), Environmental Design Archives. College of Environmental Design. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California
- Location of this collection:
-
230 Bauer Wurster Hall #1820Berkeley, CA 94720-1820, US
- Contact:
- (510) 642-5124