Gertrude Jekyll: Who was the horticulturist who made the world a more beautiful place?

Google honours a towering figure in the world of horticulture

Fans of English gardens will get a treat when they go online to a find a new Google doodle celebrating horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll.

In the world of lovingly landscaped displays of flowers and plants, Ms Jekyll is a towering figure. Her legacy vaulted her into “near-legendary cult status in horticultural circles,” according to the Chicago Tribune, with authorities on both sides of the Atlantic considering her a “premier influence in garden design”.

Born in 1843, Ms Jekyll is credited with designing hundreds of gardens in Britain, as well as a number of gardens in France and the United States. A number of her gardens continue to be popular attractions in England.

The garden at her former home in Surrey, known as Munstead Wood, is a particularly beloved showcase of her work.

She was influenced by prominent English painters of her time, with the artist JMW Turner cited as a particularly strong influence, and often worked in collaboration with the architect Edwin Luytens to create stunning combinations of homes and gardens. Her work has come to be seen as embodying the “Arts and Crafts” style, with arrangements of flowers that mimic the brush-strokes used by painters.

It wasn’t just a matter of abstract designs: she also dove into horticulture, cultivating, selecting and breeding many plants. That legacy has also helped inspire the names of flowers that nod at Ms Jekyll’s contributions to the field of horticulture, among them the Munstead Wood rose. Another flower known as the Gertrude Jekyll rose is well-regarded by gardening enthusiasts.

A prolific writer, Ms Jekyll was able to spread her influence spread through numerous books and articles. The magazine Country Life in particular ran much of her work. She also dabbled in painting and photography, and a descendant recently tried to recreate her designs for vases.

Google commissioned the latest doodle in honour of what would have been Ms Jekyll’s 174th birthday, writing in a note explaining the choice that without her contributions “the world would be a much drabber place”.

British artist Ben Giles created the design, using colours meant to conjure the tones of one of Ms Jekyll’s celebrated gardens.