Beatrix Farrand worked as a consultant and designer for more than 200 gardens, including the famous Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, and on the campuses of Yale and Princeton Universities. Among her many clients were the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the White House. But while she was respected in the social circles of her friend Henry James and her aunt Edith Wharton, her professional achievements remained largely unrecognized. This study reveals a passionate and accomplished professional who overcame a tumultuous family background in the pursuit of her craft. Using Farrand's own drawings and plans, the book shows that where her contemporaries were still turning to well-known European fashions, Farrand was creating an original style that America could call its own. This social history and examination of Farrand's life seeks to place her in her rightful position as one of America's pre-eminent landscape designers.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Beatrix Farrand was this country's first female landscape architect, combining the skills of horticulture with artistic design. She is America's equivalent to Britain's Gertrude Jekyll but "far, far more perceptive and talented a gardener," according to Brown. This new biography traces Farrand's childhood and formative years, her European studies, her marriage, and her most famous works, including the designs of private estates and college campuses. It draws heavily on journals and correspondence and includes many photographs and drawings. It also includes a full list of her commissions. More lavish than Diana Balmori and others' Beatrix Farrand's American Landscapes: Her Gardens and Campuses (Sagapress, 1985), this volume is worthy of a permanent position in art and architecture libraries. Nevertheless, public libraries and general collections that already own Balmori will not need to add Brown.?Laura Lipton, Miller Horticulture Lib., Seattle
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
As one of America's preeminent landscape designers, Beatrix Jones Farrand created such notable gardens as Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., as well as gardens for the likes of the Rockefellers, Morgans, Whitneys, and McCormicks. She was a close friend of Henry James and a niece of Edith Wharton, and was instrumental in saving the drawings of the English landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll. (Jekyll's drawings, along with 2,700 of Farrand's books, 1,786 of her herbarium specimens, and her own drawings, were given to the University of California.) Brown, an English writer with seven other books to her credit, points out that although Farrand toured the finest gardens of Europe in 1895, she went on to create an original style of her own. The author uses Farrand's drawings and plans, maps, black-and-white photographs, and 24 pages of color photographs to bring to life this until-now little-known garden designer. George Cohen
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