Women’s History Month: Women in Horticulture, Beatrix Farrand

Because there were no formal schools for landscape architecture in the late 1890s, Beatrix Farrand taught herself. She was introduced to Charles Sprague Sargent who served as the director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. Professor Sargent opened the facilities of the Arboretum to her and she became his apprentice. Farrand traveled abroad visiting and studying gardens to add to her self-taught education.

Farrand started a business in New York City out of her mother’s home. Over her career, she designed over 200 gardens for private estates, including those of John D. Rockefeller, Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge and even the White House, where she worked for Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Her public commissions included The New York Botanic Gardens as well as some of the country’s most prestigious private universities and colleges. Her well-known campus work began with a commission from Princeton in 1913, and led to eventual projects for Yale, Harvard, Oberlin College, and the University of Chicago. The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania recently restored and rededicated the gardens designed by Farrand.

Among the existing examples of her work are the terraced garden rooms of Dumbarton Oaks, the carriage roads of Acadia National Park, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, the old campus at Princeton University, Harkness Memorial State Park and The New York Botanic Garden. Now the headquarters of the Beatrix Farrand Society, Garland Farm is presently restoring her gardens as well as establishing an educational center with a library and archives.

In 1899, the American Society of Landscape Architects was established with Farrand being the only female among its eleven original members. She was instrumental in the concept of vertical gardening and selecting plants that would provide interest during the school terms at the colleges and universities. She was famous for her advocacy of native landscapes and using plans to fit the grounds, not the other way around. Her commitment to horticulture and to her profession inspired others to follow in her footsteps.