Ellen Biddle Shipman

Shipman designed The Moonlight Garden at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida for Thomas Edison'ss wife Mina.

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950) was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style.

Born in Philadelphia, she spent her childhood in Texas and the Arizona territory. Her father, Colonel James Biddle, was a career Army officer, stationed on the western frontier. When the safety of his family was threatened, Colonel Biddle had Ellen, along with her mother and brothers, move to the McGowan farm in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In these early years Ellen would begin to associate safety with the natural beauty on the farm.

Ellen attended boarding school in Baltimore, where her interests in the arts emerged in her daydreams and doodles in her notebook. By her twenties she had already began drawing garden designs.

When she halfheartedly entered the Harvard annex, predecessor to Radcliffe College, Ellen became distracted by a playwright attending Harvard named Louis Shipman. They left school after one year, married, and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, attracted by an artists’ colony which included Maxfield Parrish and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, among others.

The colony is said to have been landscaped by artists who were not by any means landscape architects. However, through their artistically trained eyes and amazing awareness for the aesthetically calming, were they able to create a lush surrounding by keeping to the simple geometrical shapes of the colonial garden. This was this style that Ellen took strongly to and with it created her own style; a style which did not go unnoticed.

Charles A. Platt was an artist and architect known for his book about Italian gardens and recognized her talents. He did not know much about horticulture, but was highly respected and thought of as “the man who could design both house and garden for a country estate”, for he had recently made a trip to Italy and wrote a book about the gardens there.

When Ellen and Louis divorced in 1910, Ellen, with the help of Platt, was well on her way to establishing herself as a talented garden designer nationwide. She and Platt played off of their mutual need for the other. Platt needed Ellen for her knowledge in horticulture and Ellen needed Platt for his knowledge in drafting and design. Ellen was also heavily influenced by Gertrude Jekyll and her brilliant use of borders as well as her memories from her grandparents’ farm. By the 1920 she was completely independent, though she continued to collaborate with him on his residential projects.

Ellen created her own residential gardens all over the United States, collaborating with many architects. Her planting plans softened the bones of the geometric architecture with planting designs that were muscular enough to speak for themselves. She once said, "Remember that the design of your place is its skeleton upon which you will later plant to make your picture. Keep that skeleton as simple as possible."

Her gardens often appeared in magazines like House Beautiful. In 1933, House and Garden Magazine named her the "Dean of Women Landscape Architects". She lectured widely, and completed over 400 projects. Her archives are at Cornell University. Because much of her work includes labor-intensive plantings and borders, many have not survived.

However, it was because of these borders that she was able to connect with her female clientèle. Her intent was to first and foremost provide privacy and secondly, a place for interaction with the surroundings. Women found the gardens to provide familiarity and comfort when life was otherwise too chaotic.

It is said that throughout the 40 years she practiced landscape architecture, Ellen would only hire graduates from Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture, Gardening, and Horticulture for Women. Although it is not thoroughly understood why this was her hiring practice, it is widely believed that because of the time, women were not being given apprenticeships in male offices.

Although many of her gardens did not withstand the tests of time, the legacy of Ellen Biddle Shipman lives on.

References

Judith, Tankard. "The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman." bkGwinn. 2006. 29 Oct. 2006 <http://www.lalh.org/index.html>.

Raver, Anne. "Private Places for Flowers and Dreams." New York Times. 7 Feb. 1997. The New York Times. 29 Oct. 2006

   <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E2DC143CF934A35751C0A961958260&sec=&pagewanted=print>. 

Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. Ellen Biddle Shipman. 2006. Stan Hywet Hall and Garden. 29 Oct. 2006

    <http://www.stanhywet.org/images/company_assets/512C7F-0D64-4A5E-9091-785DC064755F/95cfd_Ellen_Biddle_Shipman.pdf>. 

The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. "The Italian Garden." Art and Gardens-Italian Garden. 2006. The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. 29 Oct. 2006 <http://www.cummer.org/art_Gardens/gardens/italian.cfm>.