Gertrude's Gardens

Google tells me that today is the 174th birthday of Gertrude Jekyll, a woman who designed country gardens across England and in America as well.  While I am not much of a gardener myself, the ability to make a yard look both beautiful and a bit wild is something I love, and I do on occasion find myself going to English manors to marvel at the yards. 
Jekyll, born in 1843, was influenced by prominent English painters of her time, with the artist JMW Turner cited as a particularly strong influence, and often worked in collaboration with the architect Edwin Luytens to create stunning combinations of homes and gardens. Her work has come to be seen as embodying the “Arts and Crafts” style, with arrangements of flowers that mimic the brush-strokes used by painters.  I was at one such styled garden this past summer, Hidcote in the Cotswolds.  Lawrence Johnston created the house and gardens in the style of Jekyll.
It wasn’t just a matter of abstract designs that drove Jekyll: she also dove into horticulture, cultivating, selecting and breeding many plants. That legacy has also helped inspire the names of flowers that nod at Ms Jekyll’s contributions to the field of horticulture, among them the Munstead Wood rose. Another flower known as the Gertrude Jekyll rose is well-regarded by gardening enthusiasts.  Finally, in a bit of trivia, her brother was friends with Robert Louis Stevenson and may have been an influence for the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.