How wrong can you be? The evening was advertised as a talk about Gertrude Jekyll. Why would anyone want to hear about a Victorian lady always pictured unsmiling and dressed in black sombre clothes, I hear you say? Wasn’t she just someone interested in gardening? Well, as I say ‘How wrong could we be?’
Our speaker Twigs Way proved to be excellent, you could hear a pin drop as the large audience sat enthralled for nearly an hour enjoying her excellent illustrated lecture. Did you know that Gertrude’s grandfather was a Royal Academician and Gertrude herself was a fine artist having studied for years at Kensington Art School. Only failing eyesight prevented her from becoming an eminent artist. Her training introduced her to the history of colour – the influence of one colour on another. Every garden she designed shows evidence of the color wheel with colours running in drifts from cool to hot and back again. Gertrude rubbed shoulders with the great and the good – Ruskin, who was her tutor, William Morris, Burne Jones…… She worked with Edwin Lutyens for years and became famous for her planting designs which are faithfully followed today in Jekyll gardens like Hestercaombe in Somerset and Upton Grey in Hampshire.
Gertrude developed her own successful specialist nursery supplying plants to match her designs. – planting by number, you could say. In addition she was interested in all arts and crafts – her travels to the Levant, Algeria and Europe brought new stimuli. Wherever she went, she observed and tried new techniques: singing, painting, carving, embroidery, gilding, metal work and photography. In addition, she became a keen plant collector, noting all the new plants and gardens that she saw – truly an inspiring woman brought to life for us by Twigs Way.
