Garden Design

The death of her father in 1876 was followed by a move back by her mother and siblings to Surrey. Her burgeoning activity in furnishing and decorating other people’s houses gave way to becoming a garden designer. Her mother built Munstead House on heathland, near Godalming. Gertrude’s success in designing her mother’s garden was such that, by 1880, horticultural experts were beating a path to her door, in order to see her work.

In 1883, she bought a 15 acre plot opposite her mother’s house, where the young architect, Edwin Lutyens, built her a small house ‘The Hut’ in 1894. When her mother died in 1895, she moved out of Munstead House, which was taken over by her brother Herbert and family. She then commissioned Lutyens to build her a larger house, Munstead Wood, taking up occupation in 1897. Here, she created a woodland garden. It was to be the base for the remaining 35 years of her life, which were devoted to garden design, writing books and articles and running a nursery business.

Her clients included institutions, established families, nouveaux riches businessmen and people from many walks of life. Many of her jobs were of a modest nature, such as ‘…the window box of a factory lad in one of the great northern manufacturing towns’, which involved her in a great deal of interesting correspondence. She was generous in giving advice. Often she would give, rather than sell, plants from her nursery, so she was sometimes in financial difficulties; in the First World War, her finances were particularly rocky, but the Garden Club of America made her a generous donation of $10,000 to enable her to continue her life and work at Munstead Wood, when garden design was of little interest.

Her attitude towards garden design was influenced by Arts and Crafts principles, absorbed from John Ruskin  and William Morris. A sympathetic relationship between house and surroundings was vital; each individual plant should be studied for culture, habit, foliage and colour to achieve a practical, beautiful and appropriate effect. The garden should reveal unexpected views and pictorial surprises.

In his book The Wild Garden, published in 1870, William Robinson advocated a break from the accepted Victorian garden, he favoured more freedom in planting and a wider choice of plants, to give a picturesque and natural appearance. Gertrude agreed and they became close friends, she collaborated with him on The English Flower Garden, published in 1883 and on the house which he bought in 1884, Gravetye Manor, Sussex.