Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood

First published in 1996, this Pimpernel Classic edition has been redesigned and includes new photography.

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was probably the most influential garden designer of the early twentieth century. In this classic work Judith Tankard and Martin Wood explore her life and work at Munstead Wood, the Arts and Crafts style house in Surrey, designed for her by Edwin Lutyens, where she lived and gardened from 1897 until her death. Here she exercised her knowledge of architecture and local building skills, and her passion for form, grouping and colour was given full scope in the garden which she designed and worked from scratch.

Taking as a basis Gertrude Jekyll’s own photographs, scrapbooks and notebooks, and the recollections of contemporaries from Edith Wharton and Vita Sackville-West to William Robinson and Henry Francis Du Pont, the authors describe not only the building and development of the house and garden but also Jekyll’s skills both in the arts and as a businesswoman, and her collaborations with architects including Lutyens, Oliver Hill and M.H. Baillie Scott, among many others.

Judith B. Tankard is an architectural and garden historian. She taught at the Landscape Institute of Harvard University for more than 20 years until her retirement in 2008. She is the author of many books on landscape history including Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House (Rizzoli, 2011).

Martin Wood is a noted interior designer and writer on interior decoration. Previous books include Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style (Frances Lincoln, 2005), John Fowler: Prince of Decorators (Frances Lincoln, 2007) and Sister Parish: American Style (Frances Lincoln, 2011) and On the Fringe, with Imogen Taylor (Pimpernel Press, 2016). Martin Wood lives in Yorkshire.