Anna Gilman Hill

Forty Years of Gardening

A new reader of my blog and newsletters sent me a list of garden writers she thought qualified as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing. That’s how I discovered Anna Gilman Hill, our latest lost lady.

Her Biography:

What I found online about Anna’s life is pretty brief:

Anna Gilman Hill (1872-1955) was Director of the Garden Club of America from 1920-1926 and assistant editor of the Club's Bulletin from 1921-1945. She was born at Niederhurst overlooking the Hudson River at Palisades, NY. The estate was designed by her father, Winthrop S. Gilman, Jr. and completed in 1874. She was married to Robert C. Hill. In 1925, they moved back to Niederhurst and she redesigned the gardens with the help of Marian Cruger Coffin, renowned landscape architect. She died at Niederhurst on Dec. 27, 1955.

Her obituary, which I found in several newspaper archives, was very brief and listed no children. And there is no mention of the gardening book she wrote or the famous garden she and her husband once owned. And nothing about her artwork, which came up in a few searches. And nothing about her work with Garden Club of America or her advocacy for the Women’s Land Army of America established during World War I.

She has nearly disappeared in the 70 years since she passed away.

I did find a picture of her on a website called American Aristocracy.

Picture of Anna Gilman Hill from American Aristorcracy

The famous garden she and her husband once owned was Grey Gardens. Yes, that Grey Gardens, which was featured in a documentary made in 1975, detailing the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale, known as Big Edie, and her daughter, whom they called Little Edie. They owned the house after the Hills. (If you have not watched the documentary about Grey Gardens, (available on Amazon), I will warn you, it isn’t about the gardens. It’s the sad story of the reclusive cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy, and her daughter, who lived in near squalor in the house.)

I found some additional information about the actual gardens as Anna Gilman Hill knew them on a website dedicated to the history of Grey Gardens:

Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Hill bought the home in 1913 as a summer cottage. At the time, the home stood on four acres of oceanfront land. Anna Gilman Hill, a dedicated horticulturist and garden writer, imported magnificent concrete walls from Spain to enclose the garden and temper the fierce winds and sea spray of eastern Long Island. With the walls and gorgeous wooden arbors in place, she then designed the garden with assistance from her landscape architect, Ruth Dean. They planted a variety of pale colored flowers including climbing rose, lavender, phlox, and delphinium. “It was truly a gray garden,” she wrote. “The soft gray of the dunes, cement walls, and sea mists gave us our color scheme as well as our name.”

Her Artwork

In addition to her gardening book and work with Garden Club of America, Anna was also an artist, specializing in “Spatterwork.” An article from the Norfolk Ledger Dispatch in November 1937 provides quite a bit of information.

Newspaper article about Anna Gilman Hill’s artwork.

I also found another article online that provided more information about Anna’s spatterwork and her life in Palisades, NY, including information about her neighbor, a famous botanist.

Her Book and Other Writings

Anna wrote one gardening book, Forty Years of Gardening, published in 1938. When I went looking for a used copy, I found it is available for viewing online, but good luck finding anything other than reprints from 2018. It seems original copies of the book are nowhere to be found!

The first chapter of the book tells the story of Neiderhurst, built by Anna’s grandfather. The house was recently for sale, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Following that introduction, there are three sections: Garden Craft, Plant Material, and Garden Hobbies.

The book is written in an informal, almost casual style, as though the reader and Anna were strolling together in her garden while she told all about it.

I find it unusual that there doesn’t seem to be an original copy for sale, anywhere. If you have one, keep it! It’s probably worth something because those reprints from 2018 are $60 plus.

A Few Quotes

We’ll end this brief visit with Anna Gilman Hill with a few quotes from her book.

On sowing seeds:

“What is the secret of this universal joy in planting seed, if it is not an act of unconscious faith, our intimation of immortality as we confide the little brown grains to the waiting soil? For we believe that the hard casing will crack and the embryo awake to grow and blossom exactly as its forebears have done from time immemorial.”

On petunias:

“It is strange to discover how little has been written about this ever popular summer annual. Folks seem to take petunias for granted as they do sunshine and the song of birds. And yet no garden is complete without all three.”

On gardening when you are older:

“It seems to me that this autumn of life is given to us to do all the things connected with our gardens that are worth doing and for which we have never had time before.“

I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface with this brief visit with Anna Gilman Hill but I’m certainly interested to find out more. Have you ever heard of her? Does anyone have her book? Does anyone practice the craft of spatterwork?¹

Do you know of other women authors of gardening related books that I should research as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing? Send them my way via a comment or email!

And if you find these articles interesting and think others will, too, please share them and subscribe.

I’ll return with the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing article in two weeks, on February 5th. In the meantime, you can find me in several other places online: my website and blog, The Gardenangelists podcast, and my weekly newsletter, In the Garden With Carol.

1. The Palisades Free Library (NY) had a Facebook post about Anna’s spatterwork, which you can view at the library and also purchase postcards featuring some of her artwork.