25 Facts About Beatrix Farrand

Beatrix Cadwalader Farrand was an American landscape gardener and landscape architect.

Beatrix Farrand's career included commissions to design about 110 gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanic gardens, college campuses, and the White House.

Beatrix Farrand was one of the founding eleven members, and the only woman, of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Beatrix Farrand is one of the most accomplished persons, and women, recognized in both the first decades of the landscape architecture profession and the centuries of landscape garden design arts and accomplishments.

Beatrix Farrand's father was Frederic Rhinelander Jones, brother of novelist Edith Wharton.

Beatrix Farrand enjoyed long seasons at the family's summer home Reef Point Estate in Mount Desert Island, Maine.

Beatrix Farrand was the niece of Edith Wharton and lifelong friend of Henry James, who called her 'Trix'.

Beatrix Farrand lived at Sargent's home, Holm Lea in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1893 and studied landscape gardening, for which there was no specialized school at the time, botany, and land planning.

Beatrix Farrand wanted to learn drafting to scale, elevation rendering, surveying, and engineering, and so studied at the Columbia School of Mines under the direction of Prof.

Beatrix Farrand was influenced in using native plant species from: her many successful Reef Point experiences; studying the contemporary books from the US and abroad advocating the advantages of native palettes; and from visiting the influential British garden authors William Robinson at Gravetye Manor in Sussex, and Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood in Surrey.

On December 17,1913, Beatrix married Max Farrand, the accomplished historian at Stanford and Yale universities, and the first director of the Huntington Library.

Beatrix Farrand began practicing landscape architecture in 1895, working from the upper floor of her mother's brownstone house on East Eleventh Street in New York.

Beatrix Farrand did the initial site and planting planning for the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, in 1899.

Beatrix Farrand received the commission from J Pierpont Morgan to design the grounds of Morgan's residence in New York City, and continued as a consultant for thirty years.

Beatrix Farrand's design was inspired by her European ventures, especially from the Italian Renaissance gardens, and consisted of establishing a sophisticated relationship between the architectural and natural environments, with formal terraced gardens stepping down a steep slope and transitioning to a more naturalistic aesthetic approaching the creek.

Beatrix Farrand commuted cross-country by train for her eastern projects, such as the design and supervision of the Chinese inspired garden at 'The Eyrie' for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in Seal Harbor, Maine.

In 2014, Beatrix Farrand was recognized for her work designing the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at New York Botanical Garden, a winning site of Built by Women New York City, a competition launched by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation during the fall of 2014 to identify outstanding and diverse sites and spaces designed, engineered and built by women.

Beatrix Farrand's designs are noted for their practicality, simplicity and ease of maintenance.

Beatrix Farrand was the first consulting landscape architect for Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

Beatrix Farrand was the consulting landscape architect at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, for twenty-three years, with projects including the Marsh Botanical Garden.

Beatrix Farrand later went on to improve a dozen other campuses including the University of Chicago, along with Southern California's Occidental College and the California Institute of Technology.

Beatrix Farrand completed design work for the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women.

Beatrix Farrand published the Reef Point Gardens Bulletin, in which she reported on the progress of the gardens and center.

Beatrix Farrand lived at and spent the last three years of her life at Garland Farm, the home of her friends Lewis and Amy Magdalene Garland, on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

At age 86, Beatrix Farrand died at the Mount Desert Island Hospital on February 28,1959.