BEATRIX CADWALADER JONES By ROBERT W. PATTERSON Landscape Architect and Architect, Bar Harbor, Maine Member, American Society of Landscape Architects B EATRIX CADWALADER JONES was born in New York, "the product," as she put it, "of five generations of garden lovers." At the age of eleven she participated in the laying out of the grounds of "Reef Point," her parents' house in Bar Harbor, which she was to look upon as her principal home for almost seventy-five years. It was in Bar Harbor that she died-the last of the charter members of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a most distin- guished member of that distinguished group; for in the years between she had become internationally known for her cre- ative ability, her knowledge of plants, and her remarkable familiarity with all that had been written or done in the field of landscape design, from its earliest beginnings to the pres- ent day. She had, indeed, a wide knowledge in all the arts, and, with her habit of deprecating her own accomplishments, gave the credit for this to her first and principal teacher, Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum. While she was still a young girl, Beatrix Jones lived for many months with Professor and Mrs. Sargent in Brookline, studying at the Arboretum under Professor Sargent's direc- tion. In 1956 she wrote of these professional beginnings that she "tried to heed Professor Sargent's advice to make the plan fit the ground and not twist the ground to fit a plan, and fur- thermore to study the tastes of the owner." She was told to "look at great landscape paintings, to observe and analyze natural beauty, to travel widely, and learn from all the great arts. as all art is akin." She did all of these things with energy and thoroughness, helped by a keen and discriminating eye, a retentive memory, 1 and a distinguished mind. There were no schools of landscape architecture at that time, and Mrs. Far- rand always regretted that she never learned to draw; but she never stopped learning in the other branches of her pro- fession. Mental and physi- cal energy were combined in her with talent and a rare quality of mind and eye that could unerringly spot a needle of excellence REEF POINT in a stack of mediocre hay. The hay was not for her, neither in gardening nor in any other field. Throughout her life she refused to compromise with the second-rate, and in the field of her profession her own excellence was recognized in many ways. Among her honors were the Achievement Medal of the Garden Club of America, the Gold Medal of the Massa- chusetts Horticultural Society, the Distinguished Service Award of the New York Botanic Garden, an honorary Doc- torate of Letters from Smith College, and the rank of professor and an honorary Master of Arts from Yale. Early commissions brought early recognition, for when the ASLA was founded Beatrix Jones was still in her twen- ties. She said later on that she felt undeserving of the honor of becoming a charter member and Fellow; but this feeling did not prevent her from objecting to use in the Society's name of the word architect, which she always maintained should be left to the designers of buildings. It would be in- teresting to know what name she would have preferred for the new society, but for herself she chose landscape gardener. Landscape was soil, water, and plants; and gardening was the arrangement of landscape to delight the eye and the mind. Her garden structures and incidental buildings were de- signed with taste and distinction, but with a careful eye to 2 their effect in the landscape. She was always aware, how- ever, that people live and work in buildings, which garden- ing should adorn and enhance inside and out. Her sense of design, her knowledge of architecture, her respect for it, and the excellence of her own architectural work were rec- ognized in later years by Honorary Membership in the Ameri- can Institute of Architects. In 1913 Beatrix Jones married Max Farrand, head of the department of history at Yale, who a few years later became Director of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gal- lery at San Marino, California. It was in the same year that Mrs. Farrand began the work at Princeton that she carried on for many years as consulting landscape gardener. She later held similar positions at Yale, the University of Chicago, Oberlin, and other colleges and universities; but she always continued the work on private places that made up such a large part of her practice, and that she carried on until only a few years before her death. Professor Sargent's admonition to "study the taste of the owners" was never forgotten. No one "owns" a college campus, and here Mrs. Farrand accepted the buildings as the dominant factors, and the use of the grounds by faculty and students as controlling elements. She created beauty on many campuses, and if she felt at North Front of "The Oaks" at the time of its purchase by Mr. and Mrs. Bliss 3 times restrained by practical considerations of use and main- tenance, she took satisfaction in knowing that a little of the beauty would rub off on those who saw it every day. In private work, however, the study of the owner's taste, and of the owner, gradually took on a new importance. Quite early in the course of the many years in which Mrs. Farrand maintained a large office in New York, she reached the point where she could not accept all the commissions that came her way. She seldom discussed her own work, but she did once admit that there was a time in her profes- sional life when a garden by Beatrix Farrand "was believed to open certain social doors to its owner." And apparently it did. She considered this situation simply the ridiculous result of demand exceeding supply, but it enabled her to accept in general the work that pleased her most. The list of her "private" clients is a long one; and many of the names on it were well known-Mrs. Roswell Eldridge, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Elmhirst in Devonshire, Mrs. Shepard Fabbri, Mrs. Morgan Hamilton, Mrs. Edward G. Harkness, Mr. Harry Haskell, Mr. Thomas Lamont, Mrs. Vance McCormick, Mrs. Gerrish Milliken, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Mrs. Clement Newbold, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. Herbert Satterlee, Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury, Mr. Edward Whitney, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Charlton Yarnall, and a great many more. Many of her gardens no longer exist, and even at the col- leges and universities the increasing economic pinch has made impossible the perfection of maintenance on which Mrs. Farrand always insisted. One notable exception is "Dumbar- ton Oaks," which was also one of her largest gardens. Be- ginning in 1922, when the property in Georgetown was bought by the Hon. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, the de- velopment of the "Dumbarton Oaks" gardens continued un- der Mrs. Farrand's direction for more than twenty years. Now owned by Harvard University, and opened to the pub- lic, the gardens and grounds are still given the meticulous care of a private place. 4 North Front of Dumbarton Oaks before the weeping horse-chestnut died Because of her insistence on perfection in every detail, not only were Mrs. Farrand's designs carried out under her di- rect and constant supervision or that of a few members of her staff, but this close supervision continued in many cases for years afterward. Over some of her "places" her authority was so complete that she not only hired the gardeners, but handled through her office the payroll and all other costs of maintenance. She herself worked with phenomenal energy and thoroughness, and inspired and pushed others to outdo themselves. From this came the unobtrusive perfection of detail that characterized her work, and that often became blurred and was lost without her critical eye and tireless hand. Even in her most formal designs plants were para- mount, and when they went wrong the picture was no longer as she had composed it. She knew that other things than plants can also go wrong, if not quite as rapidly, and this knowledge contributed to her sudden decision, in 1955, to abandon a project on which she and her husband, until his death in 1945, had worked for nearly twenty years. "Reef Point," her home in Bar Harbor, was the kind of garden she liked best-informal, natural plantations subtly arranged to give fresh delight at every 5 turn and at every season. With the house, the herbarium, and an exceptional library collected with knowledge and discrimination throughout her long life, it was to be endowed and bequeathed to the Reef Point Gardens Corporation. When, at the age of 82, Mrs. Farrand decided that the future of "Reef Point" was not secure, she acted with her usual energy and dispatch. Within a year the house was torn down, another built a few miles away, many of the plants moved to it, and the "Reef Point" property sold. Beatrix Farrand gardens had always a subtle softness of line and an unobtrusive asymmetry. No surface was com- pletely flat, no object balanced with another of exactly equal weight and position. Brick and pavement patterns, once established, must be laid not with tape and straightedge, but by eye. Planting plans were necessary during her busy years, but she thought of them only as general guides. She preferred to prepare a planting when alone in her sitting room, a landscape clear on her inner eye, arranging her palette by writing plant names on a half-bushel of white labels. Sorted into bundles, the labels were taken to the job, parceled out to gardeners and assistants, and the pic- ture painted on the spot in a forest of white sticks. The pictures that she composed-in her later years, seated on a campstool and swathed in rugs-grew to a perfection that could be preserved only by constant care. The plants that replaced the sticks developed to their predicted sizes, shapes, textures, and colors, and then were pruned, encouraged, moved, or replaced to maintain the composition. It is com- monplace to say that a garden is a living painting; it is not at all common to see one that has the quality of a good paint- ing. The Beatrix Farrand gardens did have that quality, in their freedom and scale, their color, and their composition. But they were living things, and those that survive will miss the painstaking hand and the unerring eye of the artist who created them. 6 Provençal Fountain Fountain Terrace 7