ARTIST
SPOTLIGHT
GERTRUDE JEKYLL

WHY-WE-DO-THEM

A MASTERMIND OF
GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

WHY-WE-DO-THEM
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“THERE IS NO SPOT OF GROUND,
HOWEVER ARID, BARE, OR UGLY,
THAT CANNOT BE TAMED INTO
SUCH A STATE AS MAY GIVE AN
IMPRESSION OF BEAUTY AND
DELIGHT.”

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EARLY ROOTS
AS AN ARTIST

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A POWERFUL DUO

Among the most celebrated aspects of Jekyll’s career was her collaboration with architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Together, they developed properties where house and garden were not treated as separate commissions, but as parts of a larger whole. Jekyll’s planting plans softened the formal structures of Lutyens' architecture, and his designs gave her gardens a framework that anchored their abundance.

Projects like Munstead Wood (her personal home) and Hestercombe Gardens stand as enduring examples of this partnership. Strong stone pathways would dissolve into wild, textural planting; carefully proportioned walls framed meadows in bloom. The dialogue between built form and planting created spaces that felt both deliberate and effortlessly organic—a balance that continues to offer a model for integrated, thoughtful design.

Through this collaboration, Jekyll demonstrated how landscape and architecture, when conceived together, could enhance one another's strengths, creating environments that felt whole rather than pieced together. Her work with Lutyens marked a shift toward a more unified vision of design, one that blurred the traditional boundaries between disciplines.

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THE ART OF
COLOR AND
CONTRAST

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MUNSTEAD
WOOD: A
LIVING
EXPRESSION
OF JEKYLL’S
PHILISOPHY

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GARDENS
DESIGNED FOR
EVERY PHASE
OF THEIR GROWTH

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GERTRUDES
ENDURING
INFLUENCE

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