Women Who Shaped Garden History
The early 20th century was the golden age of the English country house garden, and women were at its center. This era saw the emergence of women as professional landscape architects, the creation of some of the most famous gardens in the world, and a flowering of garden writing that shaped taste for generations.
The Arts and Crafts influence from the Victorian era continued to shape garden design, emphasizing the integration of house and garden, the use of local materials, and planting schemes that balanced formal structure with naturalistic abundance. Two world wars would disrupt this world profoundly, but the gardens created during this period remain some of the most visited and admired in the world.
Beatrix Farrand (1872–1959) was the only woman among the eleven founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1899. Over a career spanning more than fifty years, she designed gardens for universities (Yale, Princeton), private estates, and public institutions. Her masterpiece, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., is one of the great gardens of the 20th century, commissioned by Mildred Bliss, whose vision and resources made the project possible.
Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962), poet and novelist, created Sissinghurst Castle Garden with her husband Harold Nicolson beginning in 1930. Nicolson designed the layout — a series of outdoor rooms defined by walls and hedges — while Sackville-West planted them with a romantic abundance that became the defining image of the English garden. Her weekly column in The Observer made her one of the most influential garden writers of the century.
Norah Lindsay (1873–1948) became one of the most sought-after garden designers in England despite having no formal training. Her romantic, painterly planting style made her the designer of choice for many of the grandest country houses. Constance Spry (1886–1960) revolutionized flower arranging, moving away from stiff Victorian formality toward loose, garden-inspired compositions. Marion Cran brought garden broadcasting to the BBC in the 1920s and 1930s.
Edith Wharton (1862–1937), best known as a novelist, was also a passionate garden designer. Her book Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) advocated for a return to the principles of Italian Renaissance garden design, and she put these principles into practice at her estate, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts.