An ideal partnership: Lutyens and Jekyll
Presented by James Bolton
(13th October 2026)
The October lecture was hotly anticipated by the gardeners of East Hampshire and James Bolton was an amusing and erudite lecturer. The lecture slides were a delight to the eye.
Edwin Lutyens and Getrude Jeykell worked in harmony unlike so many architect/garden designers before or since.
It seemed in Edwardian England you were never more than an hours’ drive from their energetic style. They were the starchitect/star plantswoman at a time of great change. The newly moneyed mercantile class wanted trophy houses and gardens to invite their friends and family for weekend house parties and Lutyens and Jeykell were the go to pair.
In the early 20th Century labour was scarce and so the elaborate formal garden beloved of Victorian England as epitomised by Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire fell out of favour. These were intensive and stylised whereas the trend for more naturalistic planting, championed by William Robinson, an influential Irish garden designer, was seeping in. Jeykell first admired and then collaborated with Robinson and together they published “The English Flower Garden“ in 1883. Ferns, shrubs, herbaceous borders, nut walks and all-natural abundance were in vogue. Gardens of the new style called for division of the area into “rooms” to delight the eye at different times of day or in different seasons.
Jekyll came to gardening later in life as her eyesight failed. She had an artist’s sense both in colour, drift and coverage. She had grown up with the Arts and Craft movement and counted Morris and Ruskin as influences. She commissioned the much younger Lutyens to build her a house, Munstead Wood, on land opposite her parents’ house in Surrey. They got on well and as they say the rest is history.
Luytens had a clear vison and brought a fresh style to the houses he designed though Jeykell often smothered the architectural detail such as walls or pergolas with abundant climbers.
Lutyens didn’t always work with Jeykell and his style developed almost backward to the great masters. He employed more classical features going through his “wrenaissance” to arrive at a reimagining of the Baroque style of Vanburgh (Heathcote, Ilkley,) early Tudor influence (Great Dixter) Mediaeval (Ashby St Ledger) Plantagenet (Castle Drogo or Lindisfarne) .
Lutyens also worked internationally, perhaps most famously in New Delhi providing legislature and parliament buildings still in use today and his bust remained on show until February this year.
At a time of national mourning, he also designed great memorials, such as the Cenotaph and the Thiepeval Memorial along with many small village memorials. He was very involved in remodelling London post Blitz. He was also invited to design the new Catholic cathedral in Liverpool though only the crypt was actually built to his design.
Such was his influence and versatility that he was the architect in charge of the exquisite Queen Mary’s dolls house at Windsor Castle and Jeykell of course planned the perfect miniature gardens.
Both Jeykell and Lutyens look slightly forbidding in the photos and portraits we know of them but diaries of the time recount the laughter and lighter side to each. Jeykell was fond of drawing cartoon cat sketches and Robert Lutyens reported that his father “Ned” was “the least solemn man that ever lived and banished boredom more effectively than anyone I ever knew”. They amused each other, they created masterpieces together and so of course Lutyens designed the Jeykell Memorial in Busbridge Church after her death.
Should you wish to know more about Sir Edward Lutyens:
https://www.lutyenstrust.org.uk
Should you wish to know more about Gertrude Jeykell:
Lucy Picton-Turbervill
