Who Was Gertrude Jekyll and Why Is She Important in Garden Design?

Updated

Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) was a British garden designer, plantswoman, and writer who created or advised on more than 400 gardens across the UK, Europe, and America. Her influence on garden design has been described as pervasive to this day. She spent most of her life in Surrey, England, latterly at Munstead Wood near Godalming, where she ran a garden centre and bred many new plants. If you want to understand her legacy or visit her surviving gardens, the official website of the Jekyll Estate (gertrudejekyll.co.uk) is the starting point.

What the official website covers

The site is maintained as the official website of the Jekyll Estate and organises material into several sections:

  • Life & Career — family background, early years, young adulthood, garden design, later life, a chronology, the Lutyens Association, and her lasting achievements
  • Gardens — visiting Jekyll gardens, gardens within one hour of London, gardens one hour or more from London, and gardens outside Britain
  • Lutyens — an overview and guidance on seeing the work of architect Edwin Lutyens, with whom Jekyll collaborated closely
  • Arts & Crafts — origins and overview, William Morris, and his influence on Jekyll
  • More — her paintings, her work as a painter and as a plantswoman, the Jekyll family line over 500 years, lost gardens, and William Robinson
  • Books — a complete list of her books and articles

Why she matters in garden design

Jekyll's importance rests on three verifiable strands of her career:

  1. Scale of practice. She created or gave advice on over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe, and America — an unusually wide reach for a designer of her era.
  2. Plant knowledge and nursery work. At Munstead Wood she ran a garden centre and bred many new plants, grounding her design advice in hands-on horticulture.
  3. Writing and influence. She contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden, and other magazines, and her own gardening books remain widely read in modern editions. Much has also been written about her by others.

Where to see her work and records

Some of her gardens have been faithfully restored, wholly or partly, and can be visited — the site's Gardens section groups them by distance from London and by location outside Britain.

For research, original material is held in several places:

Collection Location What it holds
Godalming Museum Godalming Many of her notebooks and copies of all her garden drawings (compiled and sorted by members of the Surrey Gardens Trust)
University of California, Berkeley Berkeley The original garden drawings
Surrey History Centre Woking Much material about her and the Jekyll family, including copies of her garden designs

How to use the site

Start with the Life & Career section for a chronological grounding, then use Gardens to find a restored garden you can actually visit. If your interest is the Arts & Crafts context, the Lutyens and Arts & Crafts sections explain her collaborative and stylistic setting. The Books page lists every book and article she wrote, which is the most direct route into her own words.