Gertrude Jekyll (November 29, 1843 – December 8, 1932), although not formally trained as a gardener, was one of the most influential horticulturists of the last 200 years. Her work helped define the English garden as an art form appreciative of color, plant correlation, and informal, ever-changing structures. She was also a gifted writer.

In her most beloved book, Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, Jekyll (pronounced ‘Jee-kill’, from the Celtic surname) laid out the configurations that influence gardeners to this day.

Many years ago I came to the conclusion that in all flower borders it is better to plant in long rather than block-shaped patches. It not only has a more pictorial effect, but a thin long planting does not leave an unsightly empty space when the flowers are done and the leaves have perhaps died down. The word 'drift' conveniently describes the shape I have in mind.

 Gertrude Jekll's illustration of summer flowers shows her color scheme and "drift" planting.

Colour Schemes is one of the most important of Jekyll's more than fifteen books, all detailing her own attempts and learnings at gardening in a hands-on, close-up view of her personal skills and preferences. This made her writing more appealing and popular than other prevailing gardening books (there were many, mostly written by men).

Gardener William Robinson's inscription to Gertrude Jekyll in his gifted copy of the immensely wide-read The Wild Garden. Robinson wrote the note from Gravetye Manor, his most famous garden.

Jekyll structures Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, published in 1914, by the season —like Oxford gardener Robin Lane Fox, who also structured his more technical but equally delicious gardening book.

By season makes practical sense, you see, gardeners have a unique relationship with time, both ruled by its tyranny and striving to exist independently. Novelist Penelope Lively called gardening "beyond the dictation of time." Time is everything (even though when gardening, we often step outside its grasp.)

 My Jekyll-inspired garden.

Garden time is measured not by dates or weeks but by events: the first magnolia bloom, the upward thrust of the clematis, and when to prune the jasmine. Time can expend abruptly and exhaustively—American poet Mary Oliver noticed in her last collection of poems "The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer"—or time can graciously repeat itself gloriously. In between times, there is ever more time.   British-turned-American poet Denise Levertov expended an entire poem on "Annuals," in which she feels renewed joy for these plants that die and need to be replanted yearly.  
"All I planted came up,balsam and nasturtium andcosmos and the Marvel of Peru  
first the cotyledonthen thickly the differentiatedtrue leaves of the seedlings  
and I transplanted them,carefully shaking out each one'shairfine rootlets from the earth..."  
Annuals, as they are typically grown from seed, may not arrive at all. Thus, we begin each year anew with the same bit lip. "Will I have learned to rejoice enough in the sober wonder of green healthy leaves?"  
Her closing lines emphasize what I've always said, which is real gardeners garden to garden, not to have a garden. Because "the garden" never arrives.

When the spring flowers are done, and before the full June days came with the great flag irises and the perennial lupins, there is a kind of mid-season. If it can be given a space of ground it will be well bestowed. I have a place I call the Hidden Garden because it is in a corner that might so easily be overlooked if one did not know where to find it.

Earlier in her life Jekyll, unmarried, made an impact on domestic arts and crafts, making decorative panels for Royal houses and turning her hand to ironwork and embroidery. She was well-connected in London circles, knew both William Morris and John Ruskin and made a name for herself in painting.

In her later years Jekyll was diagnosed with myopia and, like many gardeners who keep to themselves, focused on gardening almost exclusively. There has always been a bit of mystery about her. Like the legend that she focused on color because her eyesight was failing. Or the whisper that when asked to sit for painter William Nicholson she declined due to her later-in-life obesity. Nicholson, taking inspiration from van Gogh, who once drew his shoes after walking across London, painted Miss Jekyll's gardening shoes.

"Miss Jekyll's Gardening Boots" by William Nicholson, 1920. Learn more.

Beyond the lawn and a belt of Spanish chestnut I have a little cottage that is known as the Hut. I lived in it for two years while my house was building, and may possibly live in it again for the sake of replenishing an over-drained exchequer, if the ideal well-to-do invalid flower-lover or some very quiet summer tenant, to whom alone I could consent to surrender my dear home for a few weeks, should be presented by kind Providence.

The reality is that despite having a few close gardening friends like William Robinson and architect Edwin Lutyens, Jekyll was most at home in the garden. Not in London society, not when writing about herself, but when expressing herself and her artistic talents through her love of gardening. Nourishing that inner space through gardening as psychoanalyst/gardener Sue Stuart-Smith explores in her visionary study of gardening and mental health. Jeykll worked on more than four hundred gardens around Britain, many in collaboration with Lutyens, but her home in Munstead Wood remains one of the most beloved.

Azalias in bloom at Munstead Wood, Surrey. Photo by Tony Wilson-Bligh, courtesy of Munstead Wood Organization.

That Jekyll happened to write at all, as she might say, a gift of Providence. But then again, as women were not given access to the formal spheres of knowledge, the domestic arts - like gardening, botany and horticulture - were acceptable outlets.

 A portrait of Gertrude Jekyll, born today in 1843, by William Nicholson done in 1920 when Jekyll was 76 and practically blind.

Gertrude Jekyll's Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden exudes that rare quality of someone who loves what they do and writes about it carefully, expertly, and in a beckoning manner. You might wonder why I included a century-old gardening book on The Examined Life. I believe anyone who popularizes words like "drift" in relation to physical space and asks quietly for moments of contemplation deserves to be widely read and adored.