Early Years

Gertrude Jekyll, garden designer and author, was born on 2 November 1843, in London. It was the sixth year of the long reign of Queen Victoria. She was the fifth of seven children of Captain Edward Jekyll, a regular soldier, (1804-76) and his wife, Julia, nee Hammersley, (1813-95). Several of her siblings had distinguished lives; a brief description of them is to be found on the homepage.

 

In 1848, when Gertrude was five, the Jekyll family left London for Bramley House, set amidst the rural heaths, ponds and pinewoods of Surrey, 30 miles south of London. The large garden was paradise for a small girl; her vivid childhood memories never faded and were the foundation of her later achievements in garden design.

 

Her father retired young as a soldier from the Grenadier Guards; poor health, thereafter, kept him at home. From him she inherited an interest in science, music and craftmanship. Gertrude spent many hours in his well equipped workshop, preparing models and carrying out experiments. As a little girl, her father affectionately referred to her as ‘my little oddity’ and she was indeed remarkable for a girl of that era. As she herself later said ‘I think a shred of my father’s mantle must have fallen on his daughter, for I have always taken pleasure in working and seeing things grow under my hand’.

 

In 1861, she enrolled in the South Kensington School of Art. Part of her training consisted of copying works of the great masters, such as JMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire.  Already a talented painter, she also stidued botany, anatomy, optics and the science of colour at the school. Inheriting her father’s scientific approach, Gertrude embraced these disciplines with enthusiasm and understanding.

 

In 1868, the family moved 40 miles west to Wargrave, but her heart was always in Surrey and she welcomed the return to Munstead in Surrey in 1876, after her father’s death