Women Who Shaped Garden History
Women have shaped gardens as designed spaces for centuries, though their access to professional recognition has been uneven. From Gertrude Jekyll's painterly borders to Kathryn Gustafson's sculpted public parks, the women on this page redefined what gardens could be.
Garden design as a profession emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it was initially an almost exclusively male field. Women designed gardens, of course — they had been doing so for centuries — but they were typically described as amateurs, enthusiasts, or gardeners rather than designers. The late Victorian period and the early 20th century changed that, as women began to train formally, publish their design philosophies, and accept commissions.
Gertrude Jekyll was the figure who made it possible. Though she did not hold a professional title, her output was astonishing: she designed or contributed to over 400 gardens, wrote 15 books, and established the herbaceous border as an art form. Her partnership with architect Edwin Lutyens — she designed the planting, he designed the hard landscaping — produced some of the finest gardens in England.
Beatrix Farrand took a more formal path. As the only woman among the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, she insisted on being called a “landscape gardener” rather than an architect, believing that plants should drive the design. Her work at Dumbarton Oaks, Yale, and Princeton established her as one of the leading designers in America.
Sylvia Crowe and Brenda Colvin were among the first women to work as professional landscape architects in Britain on a large scale. They designed landscapes for new towns, power stations, and reservoirs, bringing design sensibility to infrastructure projects. Norah Lindsay worked in a more traditional mode, designing romantic plantings for English country houses, but her skill and reputation were entirely professional.
Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hobhouse combined design practice with influential writing and teaching. In the world of large-scale landscape architecture, Kathryn Gustafson has become one of the most important figures globally, and Jinny Blom represents a contemporary British approach that integrates ecology, psychology, and aesthetics.