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This exciting new book traces the life and work of one of the foremost landscape
architects of the early 1900s. Born into a prominent New York family (she was
the niece of Edith Wharton), Farrand eschewed the traditional social life of the
Gilded Age to pursue her passion for landscape design and plants. Many of her
clients were members of high society with estates in Newport, the Berkshires,
Maine, and on Long Island, but ultimately Farrand became a consultant for
university campuses, including Yale and Princeton, and for public gardens,
including the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and The New York Botanical
Garden. Perhaps her best-known work is the extensive grounds at Dumbarton
Oaks, originally a private residence and now a research institute for Harvard
University. Deeply influenced by the English garden designer Gertrude Jekyll,
Farrand was known for broad expanses of lawn and deep swaths of borders
planted in a subtle palette of foliage and flowers. Her gardens have been
photographed at their peak especially for this book. These contemporary fullcolor
illustrations are complemented by beautiful watercolor wash renderings of
her designs, now preserved at the University of California at Berkeley, archival
photographs, and design plans.
Judith B. Tankard is a landscape historian, author, and preservation consultant. She received an M.A. in art history from
the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has taught at the Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard
University, since 1987. In 2000 she was awarded a Gold Medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for her role in the
advancement of historic New England gardens. She is the author or co-author of seven other illustrated books on landscape
history, including A Legacy in Bloom: Celebrating a Century of Gardens at the Cummer (2008) and Gardens of the Arts and
Crafts Movement: Imagination and Reality (2004). Her book A Place of Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish
Colony (2000) won a Quill and Trowel Award from the Garden Writers Association in 2001. The Gardens of Ellen Biddle
Shipman (1996) was a recipient of the 1998 book award from the American Horticultural Society.
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