Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950) was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style.

Born in Philadelphia, she spent her childhood in Texas and the Arizona territory. Her father, Colonel James Biddle, was a career Army officer, stationed on the western frontier. She attended boarding school in Baltimore, where her interests in the arts emerged.

She entered the Harvard annex, predecessor to Radcliffe, but got distracted by Louis Shipman, a playwright attending Harvard. They left school after one year, married, and moved to New Hampshire, attracted by an artists’ colony which included Maxfield Parrish and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, among others.

Louis and Ellen first came to the Cornish Colony in 1893 as the literary set that followed the artists. They made their first permanent home in neighboring Plainfield. Louis sold a story called “The Curious Courtship of Kate Poins” that allowed them to lease a former taven-house, which they named after the story. So anxious was Ellen Shipman to stake out her claim to a Cornish address that on the reverse of one of her calling cards, she wrote "Geographically in Plainfield, Socially in Cornish."

Later Ellen, Louis and their three children moved into another 18th century home, Brook Place. Ellen remodeled it into a showcase of colonial revival style, both inside and out. She said, "Working daily in my garden for 15 years...taught me to know about plants, their habits and their needs."

In a 1938 interview, she said:

Until women took up landscaping, gardening in this country was at its lowest ebb. The renaissance of the art 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.

People remember Louis for his hospitality and his tennis, though one contemporary described him as a “fat roly-poly author and playwright... dripping with perspiration ... and pouring forth a continuous line of boasting and teasing.”

Unfortunately Louis had a wandering eye, and their marriage eventually broke up. Ellen found herself needing to support a family. She had always drawn, and she sketched plans for Brook Place. She was a friend of Charles A. Platt, an artist and architect known for his book about Italian gardens. He recognized her talents. Seeing some of her drawings, Charles said, "If you can do as well as I saw, you better keep on." He gave her a drawing board and drafting tools including a T square, and tutored her. Her informal apprenticeship started around 1910. She was 41. He and the assistants in his office provided training for her in drafting and construction. By about 1913 she was collaborating with Platt on projects across the country. By the 1920s she was completely independent, though she continued to collaborate with him on his residential projects.

She developed her own style. While he often did a lot of cut and fill on his projects, she designed as nearly as possible to the existing grade.

She created residential gardens all over the United States, collaborating with many architects. Her planting plans softened the bones of the 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."

Her gardens often appeared magazines like House Beautiful. In 1933, House and Garden Magazine named her the “Dean of Women Landscape Architects." She lectured widely, and completed over 400 projects. Her archives are at Cornell University. Because much of her work includes labor intensive plantings and border, many have not survived.

Some are now public gardens, including: Cummer Museum of Art, Jacksonville Florida; Longue Vue House and Gardens, New Orleans; Sarah P. Duke Memorial Gardens at Duke University; Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, Akron, Ohio; Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Summit, New Jersey.

1869 births | 1950 deaths | Landscape architects