Beatrix Farrand, Landscape Gardener

My role model

When I studied landscape architecture at University of Hawaii (after working at a landscape architecture office in Japan), I did not know about Beatrix Farrand. Nothing was mentioned about her in my classes. I learned about her after I completed my studies in the early 1970s. What a wondrous discovery! I was the only female in the office in Japan and in my college classes - and here was a woman from New York City that I could follow.

This is at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Designed by Beatrix Farrand

Beatrix Farrand, 1872-1959, was America's first female landscape architect but she didn’t call herself that.  She preferred ‘landscape gardener’.

Beatrix Farrand (June 19, 1872 – February 28, 1959) was responsible for designing the grounds of Princeton, Yale and many estate gardens, and assisted in plantings at the White House.  Her masterpiece was Dumbarton Oaks, in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC.

Stone steps at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC

By the 1920s, Beatrix Farrand was running a successful landscape architecture firm in Greenwich Village in New York City. Her firm was staffed almost exclusively by women. They graduated from the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture, Gardening & Horticulture.

Her offices at 21 East 11th Street in Greenwich Village, NYC Today, a red Historic Landmarks Preservation Center Cultural Medallion is on the building to the the left of the front door.