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is a Trust curator specialising in the history of designed landscapes. She has worked at Nymans and Standen in West Sussex and is now based at Munstead Wood.
Caroline Ikin
Jekyll took hundreds of photographs, and even the ones of people and cats are surprisingly helpful because there’s often a detail in the background that shows part of the garden, such as the original design of the summer house. It was later rebuilt as a pool house, and the photos mean we now have the evidence to reinstate the original design. We’ve surveyed the house and garden walls because we found some metal staples, which Jekyll used to tie her plants to the walls. We’re mapping their locations, so we can see exactly where her plants grew. These little details might not seem significant, but they’re all important so we can achieve an authentic restoration.
It’ll be some time before we’re ready to welcome visitors. First, we need to fundraise over £10 million to cover the restoration, conservation and development work, in addition to an endowment fund for its long-term care. Once we’re open, we’ll limit the size of tours, as it’s a small place and we want people to be able to experience the garden as Jekyll did. For many gardeners, coming here will be a pilgrimage, and we’ve got so many stories to tell – not just what we’ve discovered, but also the journey of how we got there.
Take a video tour of garden designer Gertrude Jekyll’s former home at Munstead Wood.
Behind the scenes at Munstead Wood
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Built: 1896 – about 13 years after the garden.
Taken into Trust care: April 2023
Style: Munstead Wood is an Arts and Crafts house made of local Bargate stone with a 4.45ha (11-acre) garden laid out by Gertrude Jekyll.
Potted history: After Jekyll bought Munstead Wood in the early 1880s, she began laying out her woodland and ornamental gardens and created a kitchen garden and plant nursery. Edwin Lutyens designed the Hut (a cottage in the grounds) and then the main house, which Jekyll moved into in 1897. Munstead Wood was the first of over 70 significant collaborations in house and garden design between Jekyll and Lutyens.
Fun fact: Jekyll asked Lutyens to include an Owl House in the roof – and was delighted when an owl moved in!
At a glance
Since Jekyll’s death in 1932, there have been three private owners, all of whom cared for Munstead Wood and made relatively few changes. The first owners lawned over some of the planted areas, and later a swimming pool was added. Fortunately, there was enough left of Jekyll’s original layout for a restoration in the 1990s, when the owners began to research, restore and reinstate some of the original planting, pathways and edgings. While some of Jekyll’s planting still remains, parts of the garden were simplified, with subsequent owners overlaying their own tastes. We’re assessing each area of the garden and reintroducing Jekyll’s planting where possible. Where it’s not, we’re gardening in the spirit of Jekyll, using her colour schemes and her favourite plants and adopting her gardening philosophy. We’re hoping to restore the glasshouses, which are still in use but in a poor state. This will allow us to propagate more of our own plants on site, just as Jekyll herself did.
Since Munstead Wood came into our care, I’ve spent a lot of time in the archives researching its history. It’s been a fascinating voyage of discovery, and there’s so much more still to uncover. We’re taking our time with the restoration, making sure we know exactly what things looked like in Jekyll’s time and understanding her approach to gardening.
A lot of her archive material ended up at the University of California in Berkeley, and I was given funding from a private donor to go over there for a week and go through it all. It’s given me real insight into her working methods and provided essential details for our restoration work.
National Trust Images
The south front of Munstead Wood, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the first of many collaborations with Gertrude Jekyll
National Trust Images
Jekyll designed the long border at Munstead Wood, Surrey, with cool colours at the edges that give way to hot tones in the centre
Many gardeners follow Jekyll’s principles in their own gardens even if they’ve never heard of her. The drifts of colour in the main flower borders at Munstead Wood look just like the herbaceous borders we see in gardens today. You’ll see her influence everywhere – but Munstead Wood is where it all began and where she really focused on colour theory to dramatic effect.
What’s really striking about the garden at Munstead Wood is Jekyll’s emphasis on seasonality. Here, you can see the garden develop throughout the year, with one section shining before it hands over to another. First there’s the Primrose Garden, which comes into flower in April. The special Munstead Wood variety of yellow primroses look stunning for about two weeks as they glow through the trees, but for the rest of the year they’re just green. Then the azaleas and rhododendrons bloom in the woodland from May, with the herbaceous borders flowering over summer. She has September and October borders full of Michaelmas daisies.
Jekyll trained as an artist, exhibited paintings, and later turned her artistic hand to inlay work, silver repoussé, woodcarving, embroidery and collage. She seems to have become accomplished in every branch of the decorative arts, and there’s a workshop in the house where she honed her craft skills. She was also a self-taught photographer and had her own dark room at Munstead Wood. We think she was one of the first women to take photographs specifically for publication, and she illustrated her books with her own photos.
You’ll see Jekyll’s influence everywhere – but Munstead Wood is where it all began and where she focused on colour theory
Munstead Wood is a fusion of architectural and garden design. It’s one of Lutyens’ earliest designs and embodies Arts and Crafts characteristics of simplicity, utility and beauty, featuring local materials and employing local craftspeople in its construction. Much of the house’s details are still intact – bespoke ironwork door handles and latches, carved wooden balustrades and finials and beautiful fire surrounds.
Jekyll was an independent woman with a strong sense of purpose. She designed many gardens and established a nursery at Munstead Wood to supply thousands of plants. She was hugely influential in shaping modern gardening practices, in her writing as well as her work here. She was a prolific writer, spreading her ideas through her 14 books and hundreds of articles for the gardening press, newspapers and magazines. Even in the year of her death, aged 89, she published four articles and over 20 garden notes.
Munstead Wood has dry, sandy soil. Jekyll wrote about how she couldn’t get certain plants to grow and had to use lots of manure and compost, and chose other plants to suit her particular conditions. We find her observations helpful when we’re considering how we can garden differently today in a changing climate.
It’s not just the garden that’s significant. Jekyll’s house was built for her by Edwin Lutyens, one of the UK’s most inventive and influential architects. Twenty years his senior, Jekyll was well-connected in the world of art and design and was able to use her contacts to bring in commissions for the two of them, after a chance meeting in 1889 brought them together. Jekyll had lived across the lane from Munstead Wood, in Munstead House, with her widowed mother since 1878 and bought the 6-hectare (15-acre) plot in the early 1880s with plans to create her dream garden – and a house of her own.
Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood (Pimpernel Press), by Judith Tankard and Martin Wood
Jekyll with one of her cats in the Spring Garden in 1923
I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Munstead Wood, near Godalming in Surrey, is the birthplace of modern gardening. It’s the former home of one of Britain’s most influential gardeners, Gertrude Jekyll, who lived here from 1897 until her death in 1932, so when it came on the market there was an instant buzz among curators at the National Trust. It was obvious to me from the outset that the Trust could do something amazing with this remarkable place.
We carefully considered our options, and the Trust finally acquired Munstead Wood in April 2023. We were keen to safeguard it and make it more accessible so people can come and be inspired by the garden and get a real sense of the history and continuing beauty of Jekyll’s home.
Jekyll had an intellectual approach to gardening and knew how to plant deliberately so the plants she loved are given their proper place to shine. She used common plants and cottage garden favourites, as well as new species introduced from abroad. By observing the way plants grew, she was able to show them to their best advantage.
National Trust Images
The door through the summer flower border leading to the Spring Garden
Curator Caroline Ikin says the newly acquired Munstead Wood in Surrey, while not yet open to visitors, is already yielding tantalising insights into the life and work of its former owner, influential Arts and Crafts gardener Gertrude Jekyll
Interview by Freya Parr
Behind the scenes at Gertrude Jekyll's seminal garden, where major restoration work is underway.
At Munstead Wood
Reduced motion
National Trust Magazine | Autumn 24
Find out more
If you’d like to find out more or contribute to the restoration of Munstead Wood.
Stay up to date
is a Trust curator specialising in the history of designed landscapes. She has worked at Nymans and Standen in West Sussex and is now based at Munstead Wood.
Caroline Ikin
Jekyll took hundreds of photographs, and even the ones of people and cats are surprisingly helpful because there’s often a detail in the background that shows part of the garden, such as the original design of the summer house. It was later rebuilt as a pool house, and the photos mean we now have the evidence to reinstate the original design. We’ve surveyed the house and garden walls because we found some metal staples, which Jekyll used to tie her plants to the walls. We’re mapping their locations, so we can see exactly where her plants grew. These little details might not seem significant, but they’re all important so we can achieve an authentic restoration.
It’ll be some time before we’re ready to welcome visitors. First, we need to fundraise over £10 million to cover the restoration, conservation and development work, in addition to an endowment fund for its long-term care. Once we’re open, we’ll limit the size of tours, as it’s a small place and we want people to be able to experience the garden as Jekyll did. For many gardeners, coming here will be a pilgrimage, and we’ve got so many stories to tell – not just what we’ve discovered, but also the journey of how we got there.
Take a video tour of garden designer Gertrude Jekyll’s former home at Munstead Wood.
Behind the scenes at Munstead Wood
Accept and view
Cancel
We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as this content may introduce additional cookies. You may want to read the Google YouTube terms of service and privacy policy before accepting.
Allow video to play? This page contains content that is published to YouTube.
Built: 1896 – about 13 years after the garden.
Taken into Trust care: April 2023
Style: Munstead Wood is an Arts and Crafts house made of local Bargate stone with a 4.45ha (11-acre) garden laid out by Gertrude Jekyll.
Potted history: After Jekyll bought Munstead Wood in the early 1880s, she began laying out her woodland and ornamental gardens and created a kitchen garden and plant nursery. Edwin Lutyens designed the Hut (a cottage in the grounds) and then the main house, which Jekyll moved into in 1897. Munstead Wood was the first of over 70 significant collaborations in house and garden design between Jekyll and Lutyens.
Fun fact: Jekyll asked Lutyens to include an Owl House in the roof – and was delighted when an owl moved in!
At a glance
Since Jekyll’s death in 1932, there have been three private owners, all of whom cared for Munstead Wood and made relatively few changes. The first owners lawned over some of the planted areas, and later a swimming pool was added. Fortunately, there was enough left of Jekyll’s original layout for a restoration in the 1990s, when the owners began to research, restore and reinstate some of the original planting, pathways and edgings. While some of Jekyll’s planting still remains, parts of the garden were simplified, with subsequent owners overlaying their own tastes. We’re assessing each area of the garden and reintroducing Jekyll’s planting where possible. Where it’s not, we’re gardening in the spirit of Jekyll, using her colour schemes and her favourite plants and adopting her gardening philosophy. We’re hoping to restore the glasshouses, which are still in use but in a poor state. This will allow us to propagate more of our own plants on site, just as Jekyll herself did.
Since Munstead Wood came into our care, I’ve spent a lot of time in the archives researching its history. It’s been a fascinating voyage of discovery, and there’s so much more still to uncover. We’re taking our time with the restoration, making sure we know exactly what things looked like in Jekyll’s time and understanding her approach to gardening.
A lot of her archive material ended up at the University of California in Berkeley, and I was given funding from a private donor to go over there for a week and go through it all. It’s given me real insight into her working methods and provided essential details for our restoration work.
National Trust Images
The south front of Munstead Wood, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the first of many collaborations with Gertrude Jekyll
National Trust Images
Jekyll designed the long border at Munstead Wood, Surrey, with cool colours at the edges that give way to hot tones in the centre
Many gardeners follow Jekyll’s principles in their own gardens even if they’ve never heard of her. The drifts of colour in the main flower borders at Munstead Wood look just like the herbaceous borders we see in gardens today. You’ll see her influence everywhere – but Munstead Wood is where it all began and where she really focused on colour theory to dramatic effect.
What’s really striking about the garden at Munstead Wood is Jekyll’s emphasis on seasonality. Here, you can see the garden develop throughout the year, with one section shining before it hands over to another. First there’s the Primrose Garden, which comes into flower in April. The special Munstead Wood variety of yellow primroses look stunning for about two weeks as they glow through the trees, but for the rest of the year they’re just green. Then the azaleas and rhododendrons bloom in the woodland from May, with the herbaceous borders flowering over summer. She has September and October borders full of Michaelmas daisies.
Jekyll trained as an artist, exhibited paintings, and later turned her artistic hand to inlay work, silver repoussé, woodcarving, embroidery and collage. She seems to have become accomplished in every branch of the decorative arts, and there’s a workshop in the house where she honed her craft skills. She was also a self-taught photographer and had her own dark room at Munstead Wood. We think she was one of the first women to take photographs specifically for publication, and she illustrated her books with her own photos.
You’ll see Jekyll’s influence everywhere – but Munstead Wood is where it all began and where she focused on colour theory
Munstead Wood is a fusion of architectural and garden design. It’s one of Lutyens’ earliest designs and embodies Arts and Crafts characteristics of simplicity, utility and beauty, featuring local materials and employing local craftspeople in its construction. Much of the house’s details are still intact – bespoke ironwork door handles and latches, carved wooden balustrades and finials and beautiful fire surrounds.
Jekyll was an independent woman with a strong sense of purpose. She designed many gardens and established a nursery at Munstead Wood to supply thousands of plants. She was hugely influential in shaping modern gardening practices, in her writing as well as her work here. She was a prolific writer, spreading her ideas through her 14 books and hundreds of articles for the gardening press, newspapers and magazines. Even in the year of her death, aged 89, she published four articles and over 20 garden notes.
Munstead Wood has dry, sandy soil. Jekyll wrote about how she couldn’t get certain plants to grow and had to use lots of manure and compost, and chose other plants to suit her particular conditions. We find her observations helpful when we’re considering how we can garden differently today in a changing climate.
It’s not just the garden that’s significant. Jekyll’s house was built for her by Edwin Lutyens, one of the UK’s most inventive and influential architects. Twenty years his senior, Jekyll was well-connected in the world of art and design and was able to use her contacts to bring in commissions for the two of them, after a chance meeting in 1889 brought them together. Jekyll had lived across the lane from Munstead Wood, in Munstead House, with her widowed mother since 1878 and bought the 6-hectare (15-acre) plot in the early 1880s with plans to create her dream garden – and a house of her own.
Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood (Pimpernel Press), by Judith Tankard and Martin Wood
Jekyll with one of her cats in the Spring Garden in 1923
I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Munstead Wood, near Godalming in Surrey, is the birthplace of modern gardening. It’s the former home of one of Britain’s most influential gardeners, Gertrude Jekyll, who lived here from 1897 until her death in 1932, so when it came on the market there was an instant buzz among curators at the National Trust. It was obvious to me from the outset that the Trust could do something amazing with this remarkable place.
We carefully considered our options, and the Trust finally acquired Munstead Wood in April 2023. We were keen to safeguard it and make it more accessible so people can come and be inspired by the garden and get a real sense of the history and continuing beauty of Jekyll’s home.
Jekyll had an intellectual approach to gardening and knew how to plant deliberately so the plants she loved are given their proper place to shine. She used common plants and cottage garden favourites, as well as new species introduced from abroad. By observing the way plants grew, she was able to show them to their best advantage.
Curator Caroline Ikin says the newly acquired Munstead Wood in Surrey, while not yet open to visitors, is already yielding tantalising insights into the life and work of its former owner, influential Arts and Crafts gardener Gertrude Jekyll
Interview by Freya Parr
National Trust Images
The door through the summer flower border leading to the Spring Garden
Behind the scenes at Gertrude Jekyll's seminal garden, where major restoration work is underway.
At Munstead Wood
Reduced motion
National Trust Magazine | Autumn 24
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