She found it difficult to receive commissions to design public gardens because she was a woman, and her male colleagues often did not take her seriously. As this group was the first to use the term “landscape architect” to describe the profession of designing and arranging landscapes, Beatrix Farrand can be considered the first ever female landscape architect, though she preferred the title “landscape gardener.” Terminology, and technicalities aside, Farrand faced challenges being virtually the only woman in a male-dominated profession. She was the only woman in this group of eleven, which included perhaps the most famous American landscape architect of all time, Frederick Law Olmsted. In 1899, at age 27, she became one of the founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Through her wealth and privilege, she was afforded the opportunity to break new ground for women. At a time when women of her social set were expected merely to marry well, have children, and attend social gatherings, Beatrix Farrand’s foray into landscape architecture and gardening was radical. Farrand wrote that initially, “My friends looked upon my studies as a sort of mild mania.” What was even more unusual was when Farrand opened her own landscape gardening firm in New York City in 1896 at age 23. She was inspired by what she saw abroad, and upon her return, was poised to become one of the most influential garden and landscape designers of her time.Ī professional study as intense as Ferrand’s was incredibly unusual for a woman of her background in this era. Her apprenticeship with Sprague and surveying studies were supplemented by a tour of foreign gardens that took her across Northern Africa and Europe. Additionally, she hired a faculty member at Columbia University to provide her with more in-depth tutoring in surveying (Columbia prohibited women from attending such classes). She studied botany, surveying, and horticulture during her time with Sargent. Rather than take formal courses in the study of horticulture (she was unable to because she was a woman), Farrand spent a year as an apprentice to Charles Sprague Sargent, the director of Boston’s Arnold Arboretum in 1896. Horticulture and landscape design, however, were not professions available to women at this time. Trips to her family’s summer home on Mount Desert Island in Maine, as well as her family’s longtime love of gardening, inspired Farrand to pursue a career in horticulture. Beatrix fell in love with plants at an early age. Her family was so fashionable, that it is said that the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” was first used to describe them. This was Beatrix Ferrand, a trailblazer for women in the field of landscape architecture and design.īeatrix Farrand (whose maiden name was Jones) was born in 1872 in New York City to a wealthy family and spent her formative years among the upper crust of New York society. 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 this book, and these lush illustrations are complemented by beautiful watercolor wash renderings of her designs, now preserved at the library of the University of California at Berkeley.When the National Park Service acquired the Newbold-Morgan Estate (also known as “Bellefield”) as an administrative headquarters for the Home of Franklin Roosevelt National Historic Site in 1976, it also acquired a garden designed by one of the most significant landscape architects of the twentieth century. 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. Named a Best Book of 2022 by the American Society of Landscape ArchitectsBeatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes presents the life and work of one of the foremost landscape designers of the early 1900s.
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