The Arts Society Ashdown Forest - The Partnership of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens by Tom Duncan

For those interested in architectural and garden design of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, the names of Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll are inseparably linked together. Lutyens’ buildings are the most individual of their time, blending respect for materials, a natural sympathy for the site and an endlessly inventive set of practical and aesthetically pleasing solutions.
Equally inspired are the gardens designed by Miss Jekyll. Her work remains a constant source of inspiration to gardeners to this day, with her endlessly inventive planting schemes where colour pattern and texture shape the gardens which she designed.
Both of them were inspired by the great changes stimulated by the Arts and Crafts movement and this source united them from the start. It is a story of kindliness, mutual support and artistic cross-fertilisation.
They inhabited a golden age in late Victorian and Edwardian England, a world which in some respects ended for both of them in 1914.

Tom Duncan has studied Music, Ancient History with Archaelogy and History of Art and worked as a university lecturer. After a generation in University life, he has now retired from teaching to concentrate on lecturing, to many organisations including The Art Fund and The Arts Society. He also runs and leads tours for his independent cultural travel company Ciceroni Travel. When not lecturing or travelling, he devotes most of his time to music and opera, and gardening, the other great interests in his life.