Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) created or gave advice on over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and America; her influence on garden design has been pervasive to this day. She spent most of her life in Surrey, England, latterly at Munstead Wood, Godalming. She ran a garden centre there and bred many new plants. Some of her gardens have been faithfully restored, wholly or partly, and can be visited. Godalming Museum has many of her notebooks and copies of all her garden drawings, (compiled and sorted by members of the Surrey Gardens Trust); the original drawings are in the University of California, Berkeley. Much material about her and the Jekyll family is held by the Surrey History Centre, Woking.  

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Her own books about gardening are widely read in modern editions; much has been written about her by others. She contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines. A complete list of every book and article written by her is in the Books section of this site. A talented painter, photographer, designer and craftswoman, she was much influenced by Arts & Crafts principles.

 

Her brother, Walter  (1849-1929), was a friend of the author, Robert Louis Stevenson; his name may have been borrowed for the title of his Jekyll & Hyde story. He spent the last 34 years of his life in Jamaica, becoming a planter; he is still remembered there for collecting and publishing songs and stories from the local community. The family historian, Sir Herbert Jekyll (1846-1932), was Gertrude’s younger brother. He was a military engineer and civil servant, a man of considerable talent over a wide area, ranging from founding the Bach Choir in London and laying telegraph lines in Africa to designing the road network from London and master-minding the British Pavilion, with Sir Edwin Lutyens, at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. His voluminous research about the Jekyll family is in the Surrey History Centre. Her older sister, Caroline (‘Carrie’, 1837-1928), with her husband Frederic Eden, created a remarkable garden in Venice, The Garden of Eden, which, after many vicissitudes, is now owned by a foundation of the late Austrian painter, Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It is not open to the public.

 

Gertrude Jekyll is well known for her association with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens; she collaborated with him on gardens for many of his houses.