Gertrude Jekyll 123
Jekyll’s journalism career placed her in the public eye on a weekly basis. Her
careful engagement with appropriately feminine topics followed by her delib-
erate entry into the wider fi eld of horticultural subjects display an attempted
balance between achieving social acceptability and declaring her professional
abilities and autonomy. Although, as will be demonstrated in the following sec-
tion, she more confi dently articulated her strong opinions to her readers as her
career progressed, as Sally Festing rightly asserts, Jekyll’s strength as a profes-
sional ‘was in wielding infl uence without making enemies ... her tools were tact
and diplomacy’.^40 As a professional woman far outnumbered by men in her fi eld,
she was mindful of the precariousness of this manoeuvrability.
Jekyll’s change in subjects expressed a cautious but deliberate entry into her
fi eld. Th is cautiousness is also seen in her signature. Despite her bold turn from
the feminine domestic fl ower arranging to the more masculine realm of horticul-
tural practicalities, Jekyll signed off with the gender-neutral ‘G. J’. She could have
used this to reduce any readers’ speculation of her ability and knowledge. Evi-
dence from the collection of Jekyll’s extant articles for the Garden shows that she
did not use her full name for another thirty-four years, when it appears aft er the
article ‘A Self Sown Wood’, published on 16 January 1915.^41 And it was only four
years later that the name ‘Gertrude Jekyll VMH’ fi nally appeared in print, the
Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) having been awarded to her twenty-three
years previously, in 1897.^42 By 1915 Jekyll was 71 and had established herself
fully as a respected garden designer and horticultural journalist, having written,
co-authored or introduced 17 books, published over 400 articles, and been com-
missioned for over 200 garden designs.^43 In the 1919 article mentioned above,
her full title appears in large font directly under the heading. Th is article takes
up the majority of the page, the size of which demonstrates Jekyll’s popularity
in the journal when compared with her two-line notes from her fi rst year at the
journal, in 1881. Her name worked as a measure of the article’s worth and it was
important to spell it out literally to readers, demonstrating her success at estab-
lishing a respected reputation in the gardening world to the extent that the use
of her name had become a strategic marketing tool for the Garden.
Over the course of her career, Jekyll manoeuvred through the obstacles and
challenges of becoming a Victorian professional woman. By beginning with the
safe subject of fl owers in the domestic setting, she established a respectable repu-
tation as a horticultural writer. Once this foundation was laid she was able to
branch out into more masculine areas of horticulture, like science, whilst main-
taining a favourable reception by writing these articles alongside others on the
topics with which she initially gained success. As we will see in the following sec-
tion, Jekyll’s success in tactically negotiating gender restrictions enabled her to
wield some infl uence by asserting her own knowledge and advocating her female
readers to apply their own.