Painting Garden Pictures

Gertrude Jekyll wrote in Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden: “To plant and maintain a flower border with a good scheme for colour, is by no means the easy thing that is commonly supposed.” The many gardeners who find themselves struggling to achieve a picture-perfect garden can take heart from these words. But like her American counterpart, the designer Beatrix Farrand, Jekyll had mastered the art of ‘painting’ good garden pictures. The exciting results produced by these two women stemmed from sound principles that uncertain gardeners can put successfully into practice today.

The link between the legendary Gertrude Jekyll and her American counterpart Beatrix Farrand, is one of the great stories of the special horticultural relationship between the UK and the USA. Both women shared similar backgrounds, coming from financially