The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman: A History of Women in Landscape Architecture

This study describes the life of a woman who contributed much to the development of landscape design in America between 1914 and 1965. Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869- 1950) designed over 650 gardens and her commissions spanned the USA, from Long Island’s Gold Coast to the state of Washington. Her clients included Fords, Astors and du Ponts. Her biographer 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 Charles Platt. Shipman was an active advocate for women in her profession, and trained many successful designers in her all-woman practice. The book carries an introduction by Leslie Rose Close which sets out to trace women’s involvement in gardening and landscape architecture, from the arrival of the earliest immigrants to the present day. An afterword by John Franklin Miller describes his restoration of Shipman’s exquisite garden at Stan Hywet in Akron, Ohio.