Brenda Colvin

Brenda Colvin CBE (1897–1981) 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.

Colvin was born in 1897 in India where her father, Sir Elliot Graham Colvin, was a senior administrator in Kashmir and Rajputana.^[1]

Colvin received her training in garden design from Madeline Agar at Swanley Horticultural College^[2] (now Hadlow College, which continues to teach University of Greenwich courses in the subject). Agar and Colvin worked together on Wimbledon Common.^[3]

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.^[4]

In 1969, she was joined by Hal Moggridge as partner; the firm continues under their joint names.^[5]

Colvin co-founded the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1929 (later the Landscape Institute). She served on its Council for 47 years and became its president in 1951.^[6][4]

Colvin wrote Land and Landscape (1947, revised 1970). In the 1960s Colvin shared an office with Sylvia Crowe, later also president of the ILA (1957–1959).^[7] 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.^[8]

Colvin designed many gardens, including one with the socialite Norah Lindsay at the Manor House in Sutton Courtenay, and one at Burwarton.^[9]

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.^[4] One of her most historically significant garden designs still remains at Aberystwyth University which is now listed,^[10] the listing states "The landscaping of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth campuses, particularly the earlier Penglais campus, is of exceptional historic interest as one of the most important modern landscaping schemes in Wales...One section of the Penglais campus was designed by the well known landscape architect Brenda Colvin and is one of the very few of her schemes to have survived. A number of women have played a key role in the development and planting of the whole site."

Colvin continued her landscape practice into her eighties.^[11]

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.^[4]

• Steeple Manor, Steeple, Dorset (1924, GII)^[12]
• Sutton Courtenay Manor, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire (1948–51, c.1960 GII)^[13]
• Morgans Junior School, Hertford, Hertfordshire (1948–49, GII*)^[14]
• Salisbury Crematorium, Salisbury, Wiltshire (1956–58, GII)^[15]

• Trees for Town and Country, written with Jacqueline Tyrwhitt. London : Lund Humphries, 1947.
• Land and Landscape. London: John Murray, 1948. Colvin, Brenda (1970). 2nd edition. J. Murray. ISBN 0719518008.
• Wonder in a World. London: The Cygnet Press, 1977.

• Gibson, Trish (2011). Brenda Colvin: A Career in Landscape. Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-07112-3171-9.^[16]