Garden Ornament
A comprehensive description of garden ornament in relation to architecture. Gates, balustrades, urns, garden furniture, loggias, orangeries, dovecotes, parterres, sundials, pergolas, water features, bridges and walls are just some of the topics covered in this book.
Many of the illustrations are drawn from Country Life’s library of great house and garden pictures; she contributed many articles to this journal.
The book includes a good deal of shrewd and pithy comment by Gertrude Jekyll, although the ‘critical remarks are to be taken as suggestive rather than authoritative’.
She concludes her introduction with a homily against allowing excess growth of ivy and its responsibility for ‘the disintegration of much ancient masonry that ought to have been better guarded. It is a matter that should receive more attention’.
In the second edition, published in 1927, when she was assisted by Christopher Hussey, she wrote a new preface in which she reflected on the ‘the historical sense in gardening’ and considered the relation of a garden to a historic house.