Gertrude Jekyll: The inspirational wisdom of one of the world's greatest horticulturalists

Google Doodle celebrates a philosopher of the flower bed

Gertrude Jekyll beside the terrace bridge at Deanery Garden (Heritage Images/Getty)

Today’s Google Doodle pays tribute to horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) on the 174th anniversary of her birth.

Jeykll was a much-admired landscape gardener who created over 400 unique green spaces, cultivated and bred new flora of her own and was a pillar of her period’s Arts and Crafts movement.

Known for her work with architect Edwin Luytens, her home in Munstead Wood, Surrey, remains a popular tourist spot to this day for those keen to see a well-maintained example of her approach.

In addition to being an expert practitioner of her craft, Jekyll was also something of a philosopher on the subject and often wrote of the soothing qualities of gardening as a leisure activity, wisdom we in the hectic modern world would be well advised to bear in mind.

Rosa Gertrude Jekyll, a variety of English garden rose named after the celebrated horticulturalist (De Agostini/Random/Rex)

Here are ten of her most insightful remarks on the Zen pleasures of cultivating a natural garden:

• "The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies."
• "There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight."
• "A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust."
• "The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives."
• "If you take any flower you please and look it over and turn it about and smell it and feel it and try to find out all its little secrets, not of flower only but of leaf, bud and stem as well, you will discover many wonderful things. This is how you make friends with plants, and very good friends you will find them to the end of our lives."
• "More than half a century has passed, and yet each spring, when I wander into the primrose wood, I see the pale yellow blooms and smell their sweetest scent - for a moment I am seven years old again and wandering in that fragrant wood."
• "I do not envy the owners of very large gardens. The garden should fit its owner or his or her tastes, just as one's clothes do; it should be neither too large nor too small, but just comfortable."
• "The good gardener knows with absolute certainty that if he does his part, if he gives the labour, the love, and every aid that his knowledge of his craft, experience of the conditions of his place, and exercise of his personal wit can work together to suggest, that so surely will God give the increase. Then with the honestly-earned success comes the consciousness of encouragement to renewed effort, and, as it were, an echo of the gracious words, 'Well done my good and faithful servant'."
• "I plant rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one's hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that the sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass."
• "In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone."