Ellen Biddle Shipman - Collaboration

Collaboration

Shipman's colleague, Charles A. Platt, was an artist and architect known for his book about Italian gardens. Platt recognized Shipman's talents. He did not know much about horticulture, but was highly respected and thought of as “the man who could design both house and garden for a country estate”, for he had recently made a trip to Italy and wrote a book about the gardens there.

When the Shipmans divorced in 1910, Ellen Shipman, with the help of Platt, was well on her way to establishing herself as a talented garden designer nationwide. She and Platt played off their mutual requirements: Platt needed Ellen for her knowledge of horticulture and Ellen needed Platt for his knowledge of drafting and design. Shipman was also heavily influenced by Gertrude Jekyll's brilliant use of borders, as well as her own memories of her grandparents’ farm. By 1920 she was completely independent, though she continued to collaborate with Platt on his residential projects.

Among the earliest collaborations with Platt, in 1913, was the Cooperstown, New York estate of Fynmere, owned by the Cooper family on the edge of the village. This project, for descendants of William Cooper and his son, the famed novelist James Fenimore Cooper, provided significant visibility for Shipman. While the stone mansion was demolished in 1979, a few elements of the landscape work survive. The Cooper family was impressed enough to award her the landscape work for the adjoining estate of Heathcote, which is extant today in private hands. Her other gardens include Bayou Bend Gardens, Longue Vue Gardens in New Orleans, Stan Hywet Gardens, the Graycliff Estate (now under restoration), Stranahan Estate (also under reconstruction), and Duke University's Sarah P. Duke Gardens, often named one of her finest works. The courtyard gardens of Manhattan's Astor Court Building were another Pratt/Shipman collaboration.

Shipman created her own residential gardens all over the United States, collaborating with many architects. Her planting plans softened the bones of geometric architecture with planting designs that were muscular enough to speak for themselves. She once said, "Remember that the design of your place is its skeleton upon which you will later plant to make your picture. Keep that skeleton as simple as possible."