by Lynden B. Miller, Public Garden Designer*
Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959) was America's finest landscape garden designer. Her most extensive project, Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, DC, has been described as ranking with "the greatest gardens in the world."1 Her career and her work continue to be an inspiration today. She has long been a role model for many women in the landscape design field who have followed her.
Though she came from a privileged background where women seldom worked, Mrs. Farrand was the ultimate professional. During her long career, she created 200 projects, both public and private. Self-taught, she educated her eye to great landscape design as a young woman through travel abroad, making cogent observations in her journals. Later she apprenticed with Charles Sprague Sargent at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston and learned about everything she could about plants, a subject that remained her passion for the rest of her life. Though she was one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, she always called herself a "Landscape Gardener."
The Kitchen/Cutting Garden, Dumbarton Oaks
Mrs. Farrand made gardens for the rich and famous, many of whom were social acquaintances, and a number of these gardens still exist and are open to the public, such as Bellefield in Hyde Park, NY; Eolia (now Harkness State Park) near New London; several splendid gardens on Mt. Desert Island in Maine; and landscapes at Princeton, Yale, and the University of Chicago.
Mrs. Farrand described her profession as that of a "painter built on the substructure of an engineer."2 She emphasized in many writings that "the garden-maker must know intimately the forms and texture as well as the colour of all the plants he uses; for plants are to the gardener what his palette is to a painter."3
One of the reasons why Dumbarton Oaks is so universally admired is that it was conceived and produced as a work of art, based on a wide knowledge of historic garden design but combining this knowledge in a unique way. In the many different garden 'rooms,' Mrs. Farrand never used plants as incidentals or add-ons but always for their own intrinsic design value as architectural and sculptural elements. Regrettably, this is something very rarely seen in the landscape architecture profession at the present time.
Plants were used to screen or enclose areas, to frame views as well as to enhance the qualities of each particular garden room. The gardens were designed for different seasons, especially emphasizing the use of plants for winter. To further enhance her artistic creation, she also designed elegant garden furniture, pots, and gates for each section.
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