The gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman

About this book

The Gardens Of Ellen Biddle Shipman tells the story of a remarkable woman who contributed much to the development of landscape design in America. Hailed as the "dean of American women landscape architects", Ellen Shipman designed over 650 gardens between 1914 and 1946. Her commissions spanned the United States from the state of Washington to Ohio and Maine, and from Long Island's Gold Coast down to Louisiana. Her clients included Fords, Astors, du Ponts, and other captains of industry and patrons of the arts, yet she held an emphatically democratic view of her profession and stated: "Gardening opens a wider door than any other of the arts - all mankind can walk through, rich or poor, high or low, talented and untalented. It has no distinctions, all are welcome." . Judith Tankard describes Shipman's remarkable life, including her adventurous childhood at American frontier outposts, her years in the artists' colony of Cornish, New Hampshire, and her long association with architect Charles Platt. She explains how Shipman's artistic approach to the design and planting of a garden, while influenced by the British style which was fashionable at the time, was completely American in spirit and impact. Shipman was an active advocate for women in the profession. She trained many successful designers in her all-woman practice, and in lectures and interviews articulated her belief that women practitioners were responsible for the gardening revival that enlivened the early twentieth century. Illustrated with original photographs of Shipman's superb gardens - many by photographer Mattie Edwards Hewitt which have never been previously published - and new photographs by Carol Betsch which were specially commissioned for this volume, the book documents in fascinating detail the life and work of one of America's most important and influential garden designers.