Susan Jellicoe


Lady Susan Jellicoe, née Pares was an English plant enthusiast, writer, editor and photographer who worked in collaboration with her husband, the landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe. Her main interest was in landscape and garden design.

Life

Susan Jellicoe was born in Liverpool on 30 June 1907, the third child of Margaret Ellis, née Dixon and Sir Bernard Pares KBE, the historian and academic known for his work on Russia. She was educated at St Paul's Girls School, Hammersmith and the Sorbonne, Paris. On the 11 July 1936 she married the landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe. During the war she served in the Ministry of Information department that countered enemy propaganda, working on the analysis of aerial reconnaissance photography. From 1945 she worked with her husband, designing planting schemes and taking the photographs for his architectural practice. She was an honorary associate of the Landscape Institute and helped found the International Federation of Landscape Architecture. In 1985, she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Sheffield faculty of Landscape Architecture.

Writing and editorship

Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe wrote three books together: Modern Private Gardens, Water: The Use of Water in Landscape Architecture and The Landscape of Man. With Lady Margery Allen she co-wrote The Things We See: Gardens, The New Small Garden and Town Gardens To Live In. She was also co-author of The Oxford Companion to Gardens with Geoffrey Jellicoe, Patrick Goode and Michael Lancaster. With Sylvia Crowe and Sheila Haywood, she contributed research and photographs to The Gardens of Mughal India: A History and a Guide. From 1961 to 1965, Jellicoe edited The Observer's Gardening Panel. She was editor of the Landscape Institute magazine Landscape Design for 20 years.

Planting design

is held by the Museum of Rural English Life at the University of Reading alongside the .