Gertrude Jekyll is often described as the first garden designer. Originally trained as an artist, from the 1890s, she devoted herself entirely to gardens, beginning a partnership with a young architect, Edward Lutyens. It was soon all the rage among the wealthy to commission a Lutyens house with a Jekyll garden, and many of their creations survive today.
Gertrude was keen to escape from the traditional formality of gardens, preferring hers to look like paintings with splashes of colour and rambling plants. Her first book "Wood and Garden" was illustrated with her own photographs, as was "Home and Garden", the following year. By the time she retired in the late 1920s, she has written thirteen books, hundreds of articles and was a household name.
