Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes

Named a Best Book of 2022 by the American Society of Landscape Architects

Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes presents the life and work of one of the foremost landscape designers of the early 1900s. Born into a prominent New York family (she was the niece of Edith Wharton), Farrand eschewed the traditional social life of the Gilded Age to pursue her passion for landscape and plants.

Many of her clients were members of the highest echelon of society with estates in Newport, the Berkshires, and Maine, but Farrand ultimately became a consultant for university campuses, including Yale and Princeton, and for public gardens, including the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and the Rose Garden at The New York Botanical Garden.

Perhaps her best-known work is the extensive garden at Dumbarton Oaks, originally a private residence and now a research institute of Harvard University. Deeply influenced by the English landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll, Farrand was known for broad expanses of lawn with deep swaths of borders planted in a subtle palette of foliage and flowers.

Her gardens have been photographed at their peak especially for this book, and these lush illustrations are complemented by beautiful watercolor wash renderings of her designs, now preserved at the library of the University of California at Berkeley.

Judith B. Tankard is a landscape historian and the author of six books on historic gardens and garden designers, most recently Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Other books include The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman and two works on Gertrude Jekyll. Tankard teaches at the Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and is a board member of the Beatrix Farrand Society, based at Garland Farm in Maine.