Introduction

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in garden design and garden designers, particularly women designers. Books have been written on Beatrix Jones Farrand, Gertrude Jeykll, Florence Yoch, and Ellen Biddle Shipman. Research has been done on Elizabeth Lord, Edith Schryver, and Florence Bell Robinson. By contrast, the work of Barbara Fealy, an important 20th century landscape architect, has been little documented.

Fealy's life has spanned eighty-nine years and her career nearly sixty-five. Working in Portland since 1948, Fealy has designed a multitude of private gardens and completed a number of public projects, such as Salishan Lodge on the Oregon coast and Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood.

In Oregon, Fealy has been labeled the "Grand Dame of Garden Design" and her work is known for its rich, casual elegance and graceful sympathy with the natural world. Relaxed and unpretentious, Fealy's designs are highly appropriate to both the site and the client. Yet Fealy's work transcends that of the artful designer to express the deeply spiritual nature that weaves together her life and work.

While she is well known in Northwest design circles, many design professionals in other parts of the country are unfamiliar with her work. There are several reasons for this lack of recognition. With the notable exception of a few large commercial projects such as Salishan Lodge, Fealy has designed primarily private gardens. While residential work generally engenders a lower profile, this is especially so for Fealy, whose publicity-shy clients number among Portland's more prominent citizens.

The size of Fealy's office belies her prolific career. She works out of her house and is proud to have never advertised. Although she could easily have expanded her practice and taken a downtown location, she never wanted a large office; she hired her first employee in the early 1970s, and has generally kept to a two person office. Unlike some of her contemporaries, Fealy has not authored books or articles nor has she placed herself in an academic setting, and until very recently little has been written on her work aside from the occasional Sunday paper article.

A final reason Fealy's gardens are little known outside of the Northwest is that they are understated and unpretentious. David Streatfield aptly commented that much of her work has the quality of looking as though it has always been there and has not been designed at all. Lacking the showy quality of such popular places as the Butchart Gardens of Victoria, British Columbia, her work is not always accessible to the general public.

In considering a thesis on Barbara Fealy, I initially planned to concentrate on her design process. As I spent more time with her and saw how little had been written, it seemed more important to broadly document her life and work while she still walks in this world. In addition, the lack of serious research on Fealy seemed to call for a broader brush on the first stroke. Finally, I found myself interested in the many facets of Fealy's work uncovered by examining it contextually.

In this thesis I will discuss the methods used for this study, include-a brief biography of Barbara Fealy, analyze elements of her designs, describe three of her commercial projects and four of her residential gardens, and conclude with a discussion of her work's significance to her profession, to her dients, and in the context of the Northwest.