A hundred years ago in Britain, Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens — who made individual contributions to the arts — came together to create more than 100 gardens that can teach us lessons we can use to design gardens today.

Jekyll had been an artist working in painting, embroidery and silver. In her late 30s, her failing eyesight caused her to move away from the close work of these activities, and she turned to gardening. Although they also worked independently and Lutyens went on to an international career in architecture, their collaborative work was outstanding.

The work that they created reinforces my belief that great gardens are a combination of good hardscape, or the built elements of the garden, and planting design.

Sometimes the talent for these comes together in one individual. In this case, two people brought their abilities together. To look at plans and pictures of Lutyens/Jekyll gardens is to see strict geometry softened by abundant plantings. Lutyens observed that "a garden scheme should have a backbone — a central idea beautifully phrased."

Lutyens played with geometry on a grand scale. Some of his pergolas, or covered walkways, were more than 200 feet long. His designs teach lessons to us today. They organize a garden and marry it to the architecture of the house.

Jekyll was a proponent of many garden elements that are still in our design tool kit. She brought a rich plant palette to her designs and elevated gardens to an art.

At the same time, her style was influenced by humble cottage gardens that we are able to bring to our gardens today. She championed year-round interest in the garden with a wide variety of plants blooming in every season.

Her planting design was a departure from the formally planted gardens of the Victorians, which relied on annuals in linear "bedding out" schemes. Jekyll's planting plans were specific to the soil, shelter and aspect as well as to the abilities of the gardeners who were to tend the plants.

Much has been written about the part that Jekyll's myopia played in her garden design. Because she saw well only close up, details such as leaf texture were important. On the other hand, at a distance her vision blurred, and she worked in great sweeps of color, softened by gray foliage.

One of her great contributions is the carefully worked out perennial border reaching its climax in summer. She believed in carefully sequencing the color, often the cool flower colors at the ends of the border and red at the center.

Even though we may not reproduce these grand borders today, we can learn to pay attention to flower color in our planting designs. What I take away from this is that plants matter, that they can be placed in combinations that are deep expressions of artistic sensibility.

Another of her interests was the single color border that influenced other great gardens such as the white border at Sissinghurst and the red border at Hidcote.

Although far away and of another time — and built with resources that may be beyond our reach — the design partnership pursued garden principles that are timeless and applicable to any size garden.

"Gardens of a Golden Afternoon" by Jane Brown (Penguin Books, 1994) is an excellent book on Jekyll and Lutyens' gardens.

Phil Wood has a degree in landscape architecture and designs and builds gardens. Call 206-464-8533 or e-mail thegardendesigner@seattletimes.com with your questions. Sorry, no personal replies.