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Scope and Contents Note
Beatrix Jones Farrand 
donated a large collection of material to U.C. Berkeley's Landscape Department in a series of gifts beginning in 1955. The donation consisted of drawings and papers relating to Farrand's practice as a landscape architect and material she collected for her Reef Point Library. The library contained a large number of books on landscape design, prints of gardens, and the project records of other landscape and garden designers such as English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll and American garden architect Mary Rutherford Jay. The donation was originally housed in Agriculture Hall except for a few very valuable or delicate books, which were stored at the Bancroft Library. When the Landscape Department and the collection moved to Wurster Hall in 1964 and the became part of the College of Environmental Design (C.E.D.), the Reef Point book collection was added to the C.E.D. Library holdings. Plans, prints, photographs, and correspondence were placed in the C.E.D. Documents Collection (now the Environmental Design Archives). Because the Jekyll and Jay material constituted collections in themselves, they were separated from the Farrand records and treated as their own collections. At some point, probably at the time of the relocation of the Department to Wurster Hall, Farrand's plant samples were given to the Horticulture Collection at the University Herbarium Office.
The Farrand collection is arranged in seven series. Personal Papers consists of Farrand's diary, student drawings, records of her travels in Europe, family records, and photographs. Professional Papers contains awards, association memberships, and articles by Farrand. Also included in this series are the lecture notes and glass lantern slides she used in her talks on landscape architecture. Some of the slides are colorized to show urban landscapes with and without Farrand's proposed alterations.
The third and fourth series document Farrand's professional career. Office Records is a small series comprised primarily of correspondence. Project Records is the largest series and contains project files, photographs, and drawings. Some of the most well-known projects include Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C., Dartington Hall in Devonshire, England, and Princeton University. Farrand documented most of her finished gardens with photographs, and therefore there is a fairly comprehensive collection of project photographs and negatives. Several larger project photographs were entered in exhibits; these are located in the Professional Papers series. In addition to numerous working drawings and planting plans, there are watercolor renderings of some designs.
The fifth and sixth series relate to Reef Point, Farrand's estate in Bar Harbor Maine and the research collection housed therein, the Reef Point Library. The Reef Point Records series documents the administration of the house, garden, and library and includes correspondence, planting plans, and acquisition and book lists for the library. There is also a limited amount of correspondence and photographs regarding the transfer and housing of the research collection at the University of California, Berkeley. Research Records is comprised of photographs and prints of gardens, architecture, natural landscapes, gates, and statuary, to name a few. Farrand collected the items on her trips throughout Europe and the United States. The size, medium, and value of the material vary greatly from miniature postcards, to large fine art prints. The final series, Additional Donations, has a small amount of information, primarily on the Black House. This series contains records acquired separately from Farrand's original donation.
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