Jellicoe, Sir Geoffrey Alan

▪ 1997

      British landscape architect (b. Oct. 8, 1900, London, Eng.—d. July 17, 1996, Seaton, Devon, Eng.), considered landscape design the "mother of all arts" and for seven decades was one of its greatest practitioners. Such projects as the grounds of the Royal Lodge at Windsor, the Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede, and Sutton Place, near Guildford, Surrey, all of which featured a sensitivity to purpose and environment, illustrated why he was considered as important to the 20th century as Capability Brown was to the 18th. Jellicoe attended Cheltenham College and then studied architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. His appetite for landscape design was whetted by a tour of Italy that he and fellow student J.C. Shepherd took (1924) to study the gardens there. Their book about the trip, Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (1925), became a standard textbook. Though Jellicoe helped found (1929) the Institute of Landscape Architects and later the International Federation of Landscape Architects (of which he served as honorary life president), he at first set up an architectural practice rather than concentrating on the design of landscapes. The Caveman Restaurant at Cheddar Gorge (1934), designed to blend gracefully with its surroundings, was the first of his works to gain attention. Jellicoe did pursue his interest in landscape architecture, however, with such commissions as the garden at James Gibbs's mansion at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, and the Earle's Cement Works in Derbyshire, and by the 1960s most of his attention was devoted to landscapes. One of his most important books, The Landscape of Man (1975; co-written with his wife, Susan), reflects his interest in Carl Jung's writings about the subconscious. That book inspired the work that was the culmination of Jellicoe's career, the Moody Historical Gardens in Galveston, Texas. He began the project in the mid-1980s, and, when finished, it was intended to present a landscape history of civilization. Jellicoe was appointed CBE in 1961 and knighted in 1979.

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