Beatrix Farrand

Private Gardens, Public Lanscapes
by Judith B. Tankard

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 renderings of her designs, now preserved at the library of the University of California at Berkeley.

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Why John loves Beatrix Farrand:
New research and beautiful photography bring to life the career of this pioneering garden designer who embodied the Old New York of Edith Wharton and Henry James - and who designed the Garden's own Rockefeller Rose Garden.

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