Beatrix Farrand is considered one of the most important 20th century American landscape architects. Her work encompasses more than 200 known private gardens, estates, and institutions, in the United States and elsewhere. Beatrix Farrand: A Bibliography of Her Life and Work is a selective bibliography of books, journal articles, and newspaper reports by and about Farrand. It updates Lamia Doumato's 1988 bibliography on Farrand; please refer to Doumato's work for items not repeated here, especially journal articles. While this bibliography is not a comprehensive list of everything written about Farrand, it does attempt comprehensive coverage of information about Farrand's contributions to the University of California, Berkeley. This guide also lists resources for readers interested in uncovering additional information about Farrand.
Beatrix Cadwalader Jones was born in 1872 into a family of socially prominent New Yorkers, who maintained a summer home called Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine. She had a close relationship with writer Edith Wharton, her paternal aunt. In the early 1890s she received private tutoring in landscape design from Charles Sprague Sargent, director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in what is now the Jamaica Plains neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. After establishing her office in New York City in 1896, she rapidly achieved recognition in her self-styled profession as a landscape gardener. In the 1898 publication Noted Women the World Over, she is described as "an authority on forestry, as well as a skilled landscape architect. She has received satisfactory recognition and due patronage, though she has not long practiced her profession." (p.49) The following year Farrand worked with Frederick Olmsted, Jr., Warren Manning, and others, to found the American Society of Landscape Architects.
By 1900, Jones was noted as an example of the 'gifts' women could bring to the practice of landscape architecture, in an article in the The American Architect and Building News; she also contributed a design for a formal garden to the 15th annual exhibition of the Architectural League of New York. In 1913 Jones married Max Farrand, and maintained offices in New Haven, Connecticut, New York City, and Bar Harbor. In 1927, the Farrands relocated to San Marino, California, where Max Farrand served as the director of the Huntington Library. Beatrix Farrand later lived at Reef Point, and moved to Garland Farm on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, in 1955, where she lived until her death in 1959.
Please consult the following items for additional factual information about Farrand's life and work.
Additional images may be found in the archival collections listed elsewhere in this guide. Photographs and drawings of Farrand's work turn up in secondary sources; see the Researching Farrand section of this guide for ideas on how to search the library catalogs.
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