Happy Birthday Beatrix Farrand

Beatrix Farrand and Cubby, 1927 
Beatrix Farrand Society Archives

Beatrix Farrand would have celebrated her birthday today, June 19, and so it seems like a good time to remember one of the greatest landscape designers. 

During her fifty year career she designed hundreds of projects: private homes, universities, and botanic gardens.  As a result of her accomplishments, she was one of original 11 founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the only woman.

Farrand combined a scientific understanding of ecology and land management, with a strong aesthetic sensibility, and an appreciation for how humans interact with the landscape.  Her gardens feel just right: a result of her design genius. 

Among her signature elements are perfectly scaled garden spaces and the use of plant material to soften and hide building structures.  She had a deep respect for mature and native trees.  Of one of her most famous gardens, she wrote:  “The whole arrangement surrounding Lover’s Lane Pool is, again, entirely controlled by the natural slopes of the ground and the desire to keep as many of the native trees as possible unhurt and undisturbed.  The big walnut at the south end of the pool has been gracefully framed by the surrounding levels, and the pool itself so placed that it does not interfere with the roots of either the big silver maple to the north of the pool or the boundary trees to the east.” (from Farrand's Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks, 1941)

Dumbarton Oaks.  Washington, DC.

Her work can still be seen today: at private residences like Bellefield in New York, The Mount in Massachussetts, and Harkness Estate in Connecticut; at colleges like Princeton University in New Jersey, Yale University in Connecticut, and Occidental College in California; and in public gardens like the New York Botanical Garden and Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

If you can get to only one of her gardens, make it Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.  This is where I first became aware of her work.  My visit one June afternoon was serendipitous. The moment I passed through the orangery into the Green Garden, one of many garden rooms and spaces, I could feel her brilliance.  She provides reassuring formal spaces, open naturalistic areas, and even works in a lovely orchard.  Each space flows seamlessly into the next.  And no detail is too small: the brick pattern of the Box Walk, finial designs that cascade down walls, the pattern at the back of a fountain, a small statue pointing the way through the garden.  Even the steps leading to the herbaceous borders are designed to have planting pockets to soften the hardscape and add a sense of history.

The best part of this garden is that the design process plays out in letters between patron Mildred Bliss and Farrand.  In a letter to Bliss, Sept 11, 1922, Farrand wrote about outdoor stairs:  “…out of doors one cannot skimp on scale; therefore a tread 14 or 15 inches wide and a riser of not more than 6 or 6 1/2 inches is desirable.  A skimpy tread of 12 in. which might serve inside a house looks very inadequate and mean in comparison with the outdoor scale.”  For this post, I share photos from that first visit to Dumbarton Oaks.  The visit was so unplanned that I didn’t even have a camera with me.  These were taken with an old Blackberry that ran out of battery power about half way into my visit.  (Remember the Blackberry? Note to self: always travel with a camera.)

While her gardens have inspired me, it is through her writing that I have connected to her the most.  In her letters and books she freely shares what she’s learned, her intentions, and her disappointments.  She’s that expert garden friend willing to share her wisdom.  Much has been written about her garden design, but I encourage everyone to read her work to hear it directly from her.

Share your Farrand garden story with us.

 

See more Dumbarton Oaks garden stories.  Learn more about Beatrix Farrand at The Cultural Landscape Foundation and through this Beatrix Farrand Society video. 

Sissinghurst, a bird's eye view

The charge to industrialize at the turn of the twentieth century changed our world: more goods became affordable to more people, economies shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, wealth accumulated with investors who built factories, and farm workers moved into cities to benefit from more steady work and to take advantage of urban resources.   But from another perspective, industrialization meant a loss of craftsmanship and design quality, a loss of a connection to the local land, a disregard for nature, and a de-humanization of labor.

The Arts and Crafts movement started in Britain, the most industrialized nation in the late 1800’s;  it intended to address anxieties surrounding industrialization.  The movement sought to raise the quality of design and to re-establish the connection between local artisans and consumers. Arts and Crafts did not promote a particular style, instead it was a philosophy that advanced a return to pre-industrialization design and local craftsmanship.

Portrait of William Morris, aged 53 Source: Frederick Hollyer -  Google Books edition of J. W. Mackail The Life of William Morris in two volumes, 1899

In the late 1800’s, writer and social activist William Morris popularized the movement by focusing on the home.  He was famous for saying, “have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”  He also revived traditional textile arts by designing wallpapers, textiles, and tapestries.  These can still be purchased today at Morris & Co.

Within this context an arts and crafts garden style emerged.  Today we recognize key elements of this style: the garden integrated with the home, intimate garden rooms, herbaceous borders, and formal architecture combined with wild, effusive planting.  Handcrafted ornaments embraced local materials. Useful and romantic features like meadows and orchards were also incorporated. Otherwise, Arts and crafts gardens freely borrowed from many different garden styles.  Most importantly, arts and crafts garden designers had the space to inject their own personalities, giving these gardens real power.

In an early example, Morris’ garden at Red House included a medieval pleasure garden with fruit trees and simple flower beds that were used in his textile designs and in the making of dyes.  England became ground zero for this type of gardening; great garden designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson not only created their own beautiful gardens, but also educated millions of other gardeners through their garden writing. 

Jekyll and Robinson's influence extends to one of the most iconic arts and crafts gardens, Sissinghurst Castle, which we see in the slide show above.  Set in the English countryside, the garden was started in 1930 by wife and husband team Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.

This garden had an unlikely beginning.  As a woman, Vita was kept from inheriting her ancestral home even though she was the eldest child.  (This is a detail of English law that features prominently in the Downton Abbey series that is explained well in this piece from National Public Radio.)  Vita’s childhood residence wasn’t ordinary.  Her home was Knole House, a 365 room complex with 52 staircases!  Vita described the relatives who did inherit the property as, "A rotten lot, and nearly all stark staring mad.” This incredible story is the subject of Robert Sackville-West’s memoir Inheritance.

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, in 1960 at their home, Sissinghurst, Kent. Photograph: Corbis /Corbis

We’ll never know what Vita and Harold would have done to the garden at Knole House, but we do know that their search for a new place to live led them to Sissinghurst Castle.  This ruin with roots dating to 1305 gave them a blank slate to start fresh and create their own personality-infused garden.  Today Sissinghurst is one of the most famous gardens in the world with nearly 200,000 visitors each year, more than twice as many as those visiting Knole House.

The garden consists of a series of distinct garden rooms.  Each one offers a unique, intimate space with a cohesive design.  Any one of these rooms could be modified for a smaller property.

At ground level each garden room felt like a wonderfully scaled space and a world to itself.  Then a small opening in a hedge or a path would draw me into another garden room where a totally different world opens up.  And then another, and another.  Like Chinese courtyard gardens created 1,000 years earlier,  the intimacy and repeated openings and closings of space is magical. 

The bird's eye perspective from the Tower makes the garden room structure clear: the Top Courtyard; the White Garden, Yew Walk, and Orchard; the Moat Walk, Cottage Garden; and the Rose Garden.  From the Tower it is clear that the entire property is set in the midst of a working farm in the English countryside. 

Map of Sissinghurst Castle garden.  Source: sissinghurstcastle.wordpress.com