Brenda Colvin
Brenda Colvin CBE was a British landscape architect, author of standard works in the field and a force behind its professionalisation. She was part of the Colvin family, which had long ties to the British Raj.
Biography
Colvin was born in 1897 in India where her father, Sir Elliot Graham Colvin, was a senior administrator in Kashmir and Rajputana. Colvin received her training in garden design from Madeline Agar at Swanley Horticultural College. Agar and Colvin worked together on Wimbledon Common.Colvin set up her own practice in 1922. In the early years of her career, she worked mainly on private gardens and designed nearly 300. In 1969, she was joined by Hal Moggridge as partner; the firm continues under their joint names.
Colvin co-founded the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1929. She served on its Council for 47 years and became its president in 1951.
Colvin wrote Land and Landscape. In the 1960s Colvin shared an office with Sylvia Crowe, later also president of the ILA. In 1945, immediately after the end of World War II, Colvin offered a room in her Baker Street offices to Crowe from which Crowe could resume a career in private practice.
Colvin designed many gardens, including one at the Manor House in Sutton Courtenay, former home of the socialite Norah Lindsay, and one at Burwarton.
Colvin also worked on industrial landscaping, siting factories and reservoirs, New Towns, and created landscapes around the Drakelow C Power Station and the University of East Anglia. One of her most historically significant garden designs still remains at Aberystwyth University which is now listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, the listing states:
Colvin continued her landscape practice into her eighties.
Her own garden was at Filkins in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, and is now the office of Colvin and Moggridge. Sometimes the company opens it via the National Garden Scheme.
As of 2024, only three of Colvin's gardens are known to remain.
Partial list of listed gardens
- Steeple Manor, Steeple, Dorset
- Sutton Courtenay Manor, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire
- Morgans Junior School, Hertford, Hertfordshire
- Salisbury Crematorium, Salisbury, Wiltshire