Overview

Between 1914 and 1950, Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950) designed more than 650 gardens, and her commissions spanned the United States, from Long Island’s Gold Coast to the state of Washington. In high demand for her formal gardens and lush planting style, her elite clients included Fords, Rockefellers, Astors, and du Ponts. Shipman’s imaginative approach merged elements from the Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts movements with a distinctive ability to create sensual, secluded landscapes. In Ellen Shipman and the American Garden author Judith B. Tankard describes Shipman’s remarkable life and discusses fifty of her major works, including the Stan Hywet Gardens in Akron, Ohio; Longue Vue Gardens in New Orleans; and Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University. Richly illustrated with plans and photographs, this expanded and revised edition reveals Shipman’s ability to combine plants for dramatic impact and create spaces of the utmost intimacy. Tankard also examines Shipman’s unusual life, including a childhood on the American frontier; years in the artists’ colony of Cornish, New Hampshire; and her long association with artist and architect Charles Platt. Shipman was also notable for establishing a thriving New York City practice and acting as an advocate for women in the profession, as she trained several other successful designers in her all-female office.

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9780820352084

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Reviews

Tankard's text is concise and engaging.--William Lake Douglas Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

The reader closes this book with a renewed admiration for the gardens of Ellen Shipman, having gained a deeper appreciation for the fashion in which she so successfully wove the memory of childhood hours in her grandparents' garden in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the tutelage of Charles A. Platt, the critical experience of gardening at Brook Place in Plainfield, New Hampshire, and the example of Gertrude Jekyll into an approach to garden design that was identifiably her own.-- ""Magnolia"" Ellen Shipman and the American Garden includes over 200 black-and-white and color photos as well as reproductions of Shipman's garden plans. One certainly can absorb the main features of Shipman's career by just paging through the illustrations, but to be entertained and inspired by her life and artistry, this well-written book deserves a careful read.-- ""The American Gardener""

A serious, in-depth study of the foremost woman landscape architect of the first half of the twentieth century. . . . Fascinating, historic, and poignant.--Maxine Kumin New York Times A text that carefully deploys the facts of Shipman's life along with descriptions of her projects and a great many beautifully reproduced photographs and plans. . . . Thorough and illuminating. . . . A handsome book, valuable not only to historians and garden designers, but also to every garden maker.--George Waters Pacific Horticulture Tankard's text is concise and engaging.--William Lake Douglas Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

The reader closes this book with a renewed admiration for the gardens of Ellen Shipman, having gained a deeper appreciation for the fashion in which she so successfully wove the memory of childhood hours in her grandparents' garden in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the tutelage of Charles A. Platt, the critical experience of gardening at Brook Place in Plainfield, New Hampshire, and the example of Gertrude Jekyll into an approach to garden design that was identifiably her own.--Magnolia Ellen Shipman and the American Garden includes over 200 black-and-white and color photos as well as reproductions of Shipman's garden plans. One certainly can absorb the main features of Shipman's career by just paging through the illustrations, but to be entertained and inspired by her life and artistry, this well-written book deserves a careful read.--The American Gardener

Author Information

Judith B. Tankard is a landscape historian, preservation consultant, and the author or coauthor of seven other illustrated books on landscape history, including Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden. She taught at the Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, for more than twenty years.

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