Lutyens and Jekyll: An Ideal Partnership

The last two decades of the nineteenth century reverberated with the row between William Robinson and Reginald Blomfield as to the pre-eminence, in the garden, of the architect or the gardener. At a stroke, the problem was solved by the partnership between Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, so that a house by Lutyens, with a garden by Jekyll, became an Edwardian ideal. Their partnership thrived in the brash, new-moneyed Edwardian era, but the First World War ended that golden afternoon and as Lutyens became distracted by the creation of New Delhi and Miss Jekyll, almost blind, became more and more reluctant to leave Munstead Wood, so the gardens they designed together were fewer and further between.

James Bolton set up his garden design business in 1992, following two years as head gardener at a private garden near Wantage. He had previously trained with the Direction des Parcs et Jardins in Paris. He was Faculty Director in Design History at the Inchbald School of Design and a Lecturer at Middlesex University. He now lectures extensively on garden history and runs Border Lines, the leading tour company organising visits to private English gardens and to the finest gardens in Europe and South Africa.