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Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872–1959)

Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872–1959)

Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872–1959) was a landscape architect (who titled herself a landscape gardener). Her career included commissions to design gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanical gardens, college campuses, and the White House. Farrand was one of the founding eleven members, and the only woman, of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She was likely introduced to Mildred Barnes Bliss and Robert Woods Bliss by her aunt and the Blisses’ friend, the American author Edith Wharton. Farrand worked closely with Mildred Barnes Bliss on the design of the Dumbarton Oaks gardens beginning in 1921. Her involvement with the gardens gradually subsided in the late 1940s. In 1933, the Blisses also commissioned Farrand to design what is now known as the Guest House at Dumbarton Oaks, a building formerly known as the Superintendent’s Dwelling and the Fellows Building. She also served as a liaison between the Blisses and their architect, Lawrence Grant White.

 

Robin Karson, "Beatrix Farrand’s Design for the Garden of Dumbarton Oaks," in A Home of the Humanities: The Collecting and Patronage of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, ed. James N. Carder (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 117–37.

Image: Photograph of Beatrix Farrand, ca. 1925, Beatrix Jones Farrand Collection, 1955-2, Environmental Design Archives, College of Environmental Design.