Who was Gertrude Jekyll and what did she do?
Gertrude Jekyll was born in 1843 in London. She studied art and painting and is considered one of the most influential landscape artists of the early 20th century. In her studies, she is particularly struck by Turner and Monet’s use of color to achieve exciting effects.
He met William Morris and John Ruskin who, with their vision of architecture and the creation of the Arts and Crafts movement, marked his way of making gardens.
For Gertrude, the design of each garden is a fine chiseling of the external space, which from being “designed” near the house, fades into the natural as one moves away from it.
How did Gertrude Jekyll’s passion for the garden begin?
We must think that the gardens of that time were not the size of those today. What they called gardens were plots of land of several acres where the part closest to the house was landscaped with lawns and flowering shrubs and herbaceous perennials. Moving away from the house, you came across woods, clearings, rivers and many other scenarios full of wild beauty.
Walking in the garden was a complete experience in contact with nature. Young Gertrude could not only get close to flowers, but she could also learn about the behavior of plants in their natural habitats.
The passion for what would later become her work as a gardener and landscape designer was born from spending much of her time as a child among the plants in the garden.
Gertrude Jekyll’s projects: Where the wood meets the garden
Learn to know trees and their behavior in the woods, but also ferns and undergrowth plants, making them structural elements of her gardens. In fact, there is always an approach to the woods in the project and various “flowerbeds” in the woods which have the purpose of accompanying the view of those who walk there, but also of providing a backdrop for more important plants.
When the passion for the garden and gardening becomes a profession: The landscape designer
We have seen how Gertrude Jekyll’s passion for the garden and what lives there was born, but how did it become her profession?
She has the opportunity to travel and meet garden owners and designers who open her mind to the organization of garden spaces.
Before her there was the Tudor garden full of lawns, hedges and “knot” flowerbeds, i.e. pruned in such a way as to resemble knots (see the article on “topiary art” here). Gertrude Jekyll, together with a few others, was the proponent of a diametric change in approach to garden design.
The client’s wishes are no longer at the center of garden design, but the right respect for the plants is found.
Gertrude Jekyll’s books and articles
Jekyll wrote many books and many articles for the most prominent gardening magazines of the time. This one we are talking about, “Testament of a Gardener”, is a posthumous book and collects forty of his articles, building a rather complete vision of his mature work.
It’s not easy to read a Gertrude Jekyll book. The constant references to plants with scientific and non-scientific names, some of which no longer exist, often make his lines lists difficult to remember and reconstruct in one’s mind to visualize flowerbeds. You have to read it lightly, glossing over these sequences of scientific names a bit and enjoying the almost adoring descriptions of a plant or a place in its smallest aspects.
He often helps himself with drawings and photos. There are diagrams in pen, in plan that make up spots with a name inside. The photographs are necessarily in black and white, as color does not yet exist. A sure way to understand his work, for those who don’t have all the existing plants memorized, is to visit the gardens that still host his work and which we point out at the bottom of the article and which you see in the photos.
How does Gertrude Jeckyll structure her garden projects?
His studies in art, painting, architecture and botany can only be reflected in the gardens he designs. The structure of his constructions is clear.
For example, a design mechanism that he had discovered was that the cold colors in a flowerbed should be placed towards the beginning and end of the same, while the warm ones should go to the center. Furthermore, it is not advisable to include strong and delicate colors in a single flowerbed. These indications give the composition that pathos that he wanted to achieve visually.
Another precaution is to pay attention to the mixing of the colors of the leaves in the flowerbeds. In front, for example, he suggests always inserting gray leaf essences such as cineraria maritima or stachys lanata which lighten and complete the composition.
Like any self-respecting landscape designer, he builds the groups of plants so that each season has its own beauties, including flowers, leaves and berries, but he goes further by inviting us to cover some shrubs which, after a single annual flowering, they will no longer attract attention.
In fact, letting one plant cover another is a concept that we do not often find expressed today.
How many plants could be used in the early twentieth century?
Gertrude Jekyll often spoke about how many types of plants were at her disposal compared to the past and she rejoiced at the variety of effects she was able to create by mixing them. Each time, reading these lines, I thought about how much else could have been invented today when there are 100 times as many plants available. Even with a limited number of plants, he managed to introduce a large quantity of colors and shapes into a garden that are often not even present in today’s gardens.
His vision of the formal garden is interesting. Perhaps today we would call it “large in size” because, the way he talks about it, preferring the more intimate Mediterranean garden, one might think that he means a garden where the flowerbeds are lost in a space that is too large to be exploited.
What more can we learn from Gertrude Jekyll? And what can’t we propose again today?
The size of the flowerbeds you are talking about is rarely feasible today for modern gardens. We need to rethink the reasoning. The soil in which he planted these exciting and enormous flowerbeds was first treated every year to a depth of 1/1.5 m. this type of approach is not feasible today due to both costs and water availability and climate change.
One of the important teachings, however, is to put an odd number of neighboring specimens per species, not just one per species, so that you have a nice view of flowers of that type.
Where to buy Gertrude Jekyll books
At the moment you can find the following books by Gertrude Jekyll on sale in Italian:
We will equip ourselves to offer you others as well.
Where did Gertrude Jekyll work and which of her gardens can be visited today?
Find the gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll that have been restored based on her designs or inspired by her, which can be visited today here.
It was not easy to lead you into a world as broad as that of the thirty-year life and work of this enlightened landscape designer. We hope we have managed to outline its profile and have encouraged you to delve deeper.
the Mondo del Giardino advice
The great secrets of Gertrude Jekyll’s work are between the lines so, even if some pieces seem heavy to you, don’t skip them, but read them lightly, without dwelling too much but understanding what you read otherwise you’ll miss the best.
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Image sources: thanks for the photo from social media brummellmagazine.co.uk, for the cover photo garlandsofhearts.blogspot.com and for the others in the article greatbritishgardens.co.uk, gardenvisit.com, blog.sofasandstuff.com , grayshottgardeners.net and getyourguide.it.
