Cambridge Library Collection – Botany and Horticulture: Wood and Garden: Notes and Thoughts, Practical and Critical, of a Working Amateur

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was one of the most influential garden designers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Skilled as a painter and in many forms of handicrafts, she found her metier in the combination of her artistic skills with considerable botanical knowledge. Having been collecting and breeding plants, including Mediterranean natives, since the 1860s, she began writing for William Robinson’s magazine, The Garden, in 1881, and together they are regarded as transforming English horticultural method and design: Jekyll herself received over 400 design commissions in Britain, and her few surviving gardens are treasured today. Like Robinson’s, her designs were informal and more natural in style than earlier Victorian fashions. In this, the first of fourteen books, published in 1899, she stresses the importance of being inspired by nature, and sums up her philosophy of gardening: ‘planting ground is painting a landscape with living things’.