Ellen Biddle Shipman

Ellen Biddle Shipman

Ellen McGowan Biddle Shipman papers, #1259. Cornell University Library.

Quick Facts

Significance:

Landscape architect and member of the Cornish Art Colony

Place of Birth:

Philadelphia, PA

Date of Birth:

November 5, 1869

Place of Death:

Warwick Parish, Bermuda

Date of Death:

March 27, 1950

Place of Burial:

Plainfield, NH

Cemetery Name:

Gilkey Cemetery

In 1933, House and Garden named her the “Dean of Women Landscape Artists,” not just for her prolific and acclaimed work as a designer, but also for leading the way for women in the field.  

Ellen Biddle Shipman began her extraordinary career in landscape architecture at the age of 42. Almost a decade earlier, she met famed architect Charles Platt, who gifted her with drafting tools and offered to mentor her. By 1893, Shipman, Platt, and dozens of artists had become members of the Cornish Art Colony. The presence of Platt, the lifestyle of the Cornish art colony, and its nationally acclaimed gardens, influenced Shipman's own garden design and her eventual professional career.  

Immersed in an atmosphere of creativity and collaboration, Shipman educated her three children and managed the family’s home in Plainfield, New Hampshire. Her husband, the playwright Louis Shipman, financially sustained the family’s life. When the two divorced in 1910, Ellen Shipman turned to landscape architecture to earn an income for her family. 

Some of Shipman’s earliest work was given to her by the Billings family of Woodstock, Vermont. In 1911, the botanical-minded Elizabeth Billings commissioned Ellen Shipman to redesign the flowerbeds at the Billings estate. Keeping with Shipman’s philosophy that planting should be approached “as a painter would,” the two women added more color to the newly redesigned beds. Shipman divided the garden by color into six sections using 57 varieties of flowers including phlox, hollyhock, and irises. Elizabeth Billings was so pleased with the garden that she recommended Shipman to design outdoor spaces throughout Woodstock including the triangular-shaped park near the East Street Bridge and Woodstock Congressional Church. In her early years as a landscape architect, Shipman also collaborated with her mentor, Charles Platt, on several projects including Charles Fenimore Cooper II’s home in Cooperstown, New York. 

A basic design structure in her work, influenced by Platt, was the relationship of the garden between the house and the landscape beyond. Like Platt, she did not try to invent styles but worked to refine the style she developed. According to her friend and colleague, Anne Bruce Haldemen, "Although Mrs. Shipman's basic designs were outstanding and practical, her use of plant material to interpret the design was in a class by itself." 

Shipman’s reputation eventually spread nationwide, and she was hired to work on over 600 gardens throughout her career.  Some notable projects include the Sarah Duke Memorial Garden at Duke University and the Chatham Gardens (now located in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park). Augusta Homer Saint-Gaudens turned to Shipman when she planned to donate her estate to a newly formed foundation which would serve as a living memorial to her deceased husband, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Shipman made alternations to the gardens which are now part of Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park. She retired in 1947 after 35 years of designing. 

Few of the gardens Shipman designed are in their original conditions, but her legacy continues through her trailblazing work to support women in the field of landscape architecture. In 1920 she opened an office in New York City and hired only woman graduates from Lowthorpe School, one of the few architecture colleges that admitted female students. She proclaimed in 1938, “Until women took up landscaping, gardening in this country was at its lowest ebb. The renaissance was due largely to the fact that women, instead of working over their boards, used plants as if they were painting pictures as an artist would. Today women are at the top of the profession.”