Books

A revised edition of the LALH classic

The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman, published in 1996, introduced a generation of garden lovers to Ellen Shipman (1869–1950), a Philadelphian who discovered her remarkable talent for landscape design in the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. Beginning her career as a hands-on gardener, Shipman received drafting instruction from Charles A. Platt. In time, she was collaborating with Platt, Warren H. Manning, and other landscape architects, who incorporated her sumptuous flower borders into their estate layouts. The scope of Shipman’s practice and garden making grew as she set up her professional office in New Hampshire. In the early 1920s she moved to New York City, where she attracted clients throughout the United States, eventually recording more than six hundred commissions. Judith B. Tankard’s award-winning book was the first to present Shipman’s achievements and in doing so illuminated a neglected topic: women and American landscape architecture.

In response to the popularity of Tankard’s book and its increasing scarcity, LALH has published an updated edition that covers several gardens designed by Shipman that were discovered as a result of the original edition—among them, the Italian Garden at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens (Jacksonville, Florida) and Tranquillity Farm (Middlebury, Connecticut). The revised edition also features a new full-color introduction and an expansive new design.