Alice Recknagel Ireys Papers, 1885-2001

Alice Elizabeth Recknagel was born April 24, 1911 in Brooklyn, New York, to Harold S. and Rea Estes Recknagel. Her father was an attorney who worked in the insurance industry. Alice and her sister Catherine were the fourth generation to grow up in the house at 45 Willow Street.

As so often happens with avid gardeners, Alice had a very early introduction to growing things. In her case it was under the tutelage of her grandfather, Ellery Estes, during summers spent on the family farm in Green Harbor, Massachusetts. Alice helped her grandfather in his vegetable garden and was given a small plot of her own in which to grow flowers.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG), established in 1910, was under development through her youth. Once her interest in plants was awakened, she volunteered at the BBG and ended up doing any job they had. In the process, she got extensive, invaluable, hands-on experience of a kind not usually available to a child in the city. While studying at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, she made a list of "things she could do with plants" and did some research into the field of landscape architecture. A friend suggested she look into the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a school for women, founded by Harvard professors in 1916, when Harvard did not admit women as graduate students. The School offered an intensive professional training program leading to a masters degree for those who held a B.A. or a Certificate for those who did not.

Alice Recknagel earned her certificate in 1935 and went to work for Packer alumna Marjorie Sewell Cautley in New Jersey. She taught gardening at Silver Lake Camp in Hawkeye, New York, in the summer of 1936 and worked at the nursery of W.J. Manning in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1937.

In February 1936 Alice began working for the landscape architect Charles Lowrie. Lowrie and his staff of five worked mostly on housing developments and public parks. When the Depression forced Lowrie to let most of the staff go, he kept Alice on. Out of necessity, she learned to do a bit of everything around the office, including typing, filing, cleaning, and errands as well as rendering, "inking," and visiting job sites. It was an experience she later described as "a wonderful way to learn." When Lowrie died suddenly in September 1939, Alice was asked to take over his clients, but only five of them agreed to stay with her. One project she completed was the planting plan for the Red Hook Housing Project in Brooklyn.

After Lowrie's death, Alice pieced together a variety of jobs, from giving gardening talks on the radio and writing articles for newspapers to working in collaboration with Cambridge School alumnae Cynthia Wiley and Clara Coffey. With Wiley and Coffey, she designed playgrounds for the New York City Parks Department and landscape plans for housing in New York City, Niagara Falls, New Rochelle, Detroit, and New Jersey. She also did special projects for landscape architects Arthur F. Brinckerhoff and A. Carl Stelling and architects Lorimer Rich (for whom she made a planting plan for the Tomb of the Unknowns) and I. Naftali. In the spring of 1941 and the fall of 1943 she taught a landscape gardening course at Connecticut College.

At the wedding of her Cambridge School roommate in 1942, Alice met Henry Tillinghast Ireys III, a Virginia Military Institute graduate who was working for a construction firm in New York City. They married in 1943. After the birth of their first child in 1946, Alice closed the Manhattan office and set up shop at home on Willow Street.

A good part of Ireys' time in the following decade was primarily occupied by the Ireys' three children, Catherine, Anne, and Henry. In a 1973 American Society of Landscape Architects survey of its women members, Alice wrote that she "did only enough to keep [her] interest alive" during this period.

Once the children were in school, with a lot of assistance from her mother (who lived with them), Ireys resumed a busier work schedule. Though the majority of her work was residential gardens for private citizens, Alice also designed gardens for churches, hospitals, libraries, historical societies, and schools. In the 1950s these included gardens for the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Home for Children, Brooklyn House for Aged Men, the Thoracic Hospital, and several projects at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Among these was the Garden of Fragrance for the Blind (renamed the Alice Recknagel Ireys Fragrance Garden in 2001), the first such garden and the BBG's satellite 12-acre Clark Memorial Garden on Long Island (now the Clark Botanic Garden).

From the late 1950s until the early 1980s Ireys regularly taught at the Landscape Design Schools run by the Federated Garden Clubs. These schools educated garden club members in the principles of "good landscape architectural practice" so that they could "serve as guardians and critics of outdoor beauty in the U.S.A." One major aim of the schools was to further the profession by educating potential board and committee members to advocate for professional planning of public outdoor areas.

Ireys was a perennially popular speaker at garden club meetings in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, her talk on Planning the Small Garden being the most in demand. Beginning in the 1970s, Ireys also offered multi-session "Landscape Design" and "Advanced Landscape Design" courses to garden clubs and at a variety of adult education venues.

Ireys' first book, How to Plan and Plant Your Own Property (1967), was written to address the questions and issues raised most often at her lectures. It was an accessible introduction to the principles of landscape design illustrated with photographs of gardens designed by Ireys and some of her colleagues. The book reached a wide audience, from home gardeners to landscape architecture students, and helped lay the groundwork for much more knowledgeable generations of gardeners to follow.

Ireys' list of clients, as well as speaking and teaching engagements, continued to grow in the 1960s. Her husband died in 1963.

Ireys' client list grew with her reputation from the 1970s through the 1990s. She was busy with many design projects, primarily for private citizens, all over New York and New Jersey with some in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, and California. These projects ranged in scope from postage-stamp-sized Brooklyn backyards to large rural estates. She also designed gardens for a number of small institutions, churches, historical societies, schools, small museums, etc.

Her second book, Small Gardens for City and Country, published in 1978, drew on her long experience working in small city spaces and teaching on the topic. Also in 1978 she was made a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

In 1987 Ireys began an association with the venerable seed company, W. Atlee Burpee & Co, which had been purchased by her clients Carter and Suzanne Bales. Alice designed theme gardens for their seed, plant, and bulb catalogs. Customers who bought these "designed gardens" received a copy of the plan and all seeds, bulbs, or plants needed to reproduce the design. The most popular of these designs were published as part of the Burpee American Gardens series in 1991. In the same year Burpee also published Designs for American Gardens. Similar in format to her earlier works, it used a selection of Ireys' built designs to provide ideas and demonstrate principles for small and large gardens.

In 1991 the American Horticultural Society honored her with the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award, the highest honor the Society can bestow on an individual, and in 1992 the Garden Writers' Association of America presented her with its Quill and Trowel Award. In 1994 she received the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Distinguished Service Medal.

Though hampered somewhat by infirmities, Alice Ireys continued to work with the aid of a cane, golf carts, and, if need be, photographs, well into the year of her death. She died late in 2000 at age 89.

Alice Recknagel Ireys worked during a period of transition in the field of landscape architecture from the large private estates and grand public works projects of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the smaller scale ventures of the post-World War II world. By concentrating on smaller residential projects she was able to meet her personal needs, combining a career with child-rearing responsibilities, while also bringing the professional's skills to residential design. Ireys successfully inspired in her clients and students "the joys of creating and caring for a garden…among the greatest pleasures in this world." She worked to determine the essence of her clients' and students' desires in order to develop a solution that was both beautiful and practical in the sense that it could realistically be maintained. From her childhood experiences as a plant lover, plants and good horticulture were central to her designs.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Alice Recknagel Ireys Papers consist of 69.25 linear feet of biographical material, correspondence, financial records, notes, plant lists, sketches, renderings, plans, photographs, drafts and typescripts of writings, and handouts prepared for teaching. The materials are primarily related to her professional life. They date from 1885 to 2001 with the bulk dating from the 1950s until Ireys' death in 2000.

The main subject of Ireys' papers is the approximately 800 gardens she designed over her sixty-five year career. The largest series, Series II. CLIENT FILES, contains the bulk of the material about individual gardens. The many sketches in the files reveal how designs evolved over time as her communication with the clients deepened and their desires became better defined and understood. Ireys maintained relationships with clients for many years, sometimes over decades and through several moves to new properties. The files clearly illustrate her dedication to finding a design solution "that is practical and beautiful and fulfills [the clients'] dreams."

The files also show her impressive knowledge of plants and careful selection for the site and situation. They also illustrate Ireys' intense desire that after all that careful selection and placement the plants should be well-tended. Many files include detailed instructions for general care and pruning, as well as disease and insect control.

Materials about individual gardens can also be found in Series V. PHOTOGRAPHS, which is primarily made up of professional photographs of built gardens designed by Ireys. Series III. FINANCIAL FILES contains account books with billing information for individual clients. And because Ireys used her own built works to illustrate principles in her writings, Series IX. WRITINGS can be consulted for Ireys' own descriptions of her aims on those projects.

The arc of Ireys' career follows general twentieth century trends away from large estate gardens and public projects to smaller-scale, simpler projects. Ireys' dedication to beautiful, functional, and reasonable-to-maintain "home grounds" evident in her design work, teaching, and writing, jibe well with the post-World War II emphasis on the home.

Materials in Series VII. SPEECHES, Series VIII. TEACHING, and Series IX. WRITINGS provide ample evidence of Ireys' dedication to clear and accessible instruction on the principles of landscape design and the "joys of creating and caring for a garden." In addition, these materials demonstrate the interrelationships between landscape architects and garden club members who were likely to be involved in hiring landscape architects, for their own properties or public work for the towns where they lived and institutions they supported.

Series IX. WRITINGS also provides a glimpse of the world of garden book publishing in the latter twentieth century with files of correspondence and notes assessing the garden book market.

There is little personal material, mostly in Series I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS. Because Ireys' clients were sometimes her close friends, researchers can get a sense of her personality in correspondence with them in Series II. The Weekly Notes in Series IV. MISCELLANEOUS PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, provide a sort of brief outline of the activities of Ireys' day and reveal the interrelated nature of the personal and professional. Correspondence related to travel for design work at a distance from Brooklyn, and for out-of-town speaking and teaching engagements, offers other glimpses into the challenges of combining family obligations with career.

Researchers may contact the Sophia Smith Collection for the folder list for Series II. Client Files and portions of the Photographs series which are not included in the online version of the finding aid.

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into nine series:

• I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS
• II. CLIENT FILES
• III. FINANCIAL FILES
• IV. MISCELLANEOUS PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
• V. PHOTOGRAPHS
• VI. PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE
• VII. SPEECHES
• VIII. TEACHING
• IX. WRITINGS
• OVERSIZE MATERIALS

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SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS (1885-2001, n.d.) 5 linear ft.

This series consists of general material about Alice Ireys' life and career, education, family, and homes. Included is the video documentary The Living Landscapes of Alice Recknagel Ireys (1999) and material about its creation. The series is arranged alphabetically. The extensive set of Cambridge School of Domestic and Landscape Architecture class notes offers many details of the training available to women at that important institution

SERIES II. CLIENT FILES (1926-2000, n.d.) 42.5 linear ft.

This series consists of materials related to gardens designed by Alice Ireys. It includes correspondence with clients and contractors; information about clients; design sketches and plans; construction drawings and details; contracts and specifications; plant lists, and notes on phone calls, site visits, and meetings with clients. The first section of the list for the series, Client files, is as inclusive a list of client names as possible. It includes the names and addresses of all clients represented in this series. If there is only oversize material related to a particular client, the name is followed by a 'see' reference, directing the researcher to materials for that client in the subseries Client files-oversize boxes or the subseries Client files-flat files. The list also contains "see" and "see also" references for cases where clients may have changed surname due to subsequent marriages, or commissioned, or been involved in the commissioning of, public as well as private gardens: or where properties with Ireys-designed gardens were inherited or purchased by clients with different surnames.

The files are arranged in three sections according to the physical size of the material: Client files contains correspondence, lists, clippings, notes, and small drawings-all materials that fit into standard legal size folders; Client files-oversize boxes is primarily mid-sized drawings and sketches with a few miscellaneous larger items; Client files-flat files contains full size drawings, sketches, and landscape plans. Each section is arranged alphabetically by client name with some clients represented in two or in all three sections.

SERIES III. FINANCIAL FILES (1928-1997, n.d.) 1 linear ft.

This series consists of tax information, personal and client account books, fee lists, check ledgers, and lists of fees.

SERIES IV. MISCELLANEOUS PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (1937-1999, n.d.) 2.75 linear ft.

This series consists of various materials reflecting a range of Ireys' professional activities unrelated to specific garden designs. Included are materials on garden consultations, daily activities, exhibitions, garden tours, judging at flower shows, bulb orders, and organizational affiliations. The weekly notes (1971-99) are brief notes on the major tasks of each day with a weekly summary attached. To reduce the overall bulk of the papers, complete sets of these notes were preserved at five year intervals and the rest were discarded. The notes give a sense of how Ireys' days were structured through the year and the way personal and professional matters were interwoven in the day.

SERIES V. PHOTOGRAPHS (1938-99, n.d.) 10 linear ft.

This series consists primarily of professional photographs of gardens designed by Ireys. In some cases there are "before" photographs of garden sites taken by Ireys or her clients and some snapshots of the garden-in-progress taken by clients. There are also a few family photographs and some photographs of garden elements and gardens designed by others used for teaching and for illustrating written works. The materials are arranged in three sections by photographic format: prints, slides, and negatives. Within each section, photographs are arranged in groups as follows: Biographical, Client files, Subjects, Writings. Images of gardens designed by Alice Ireys are arranged by client name. Photographs used in teaching are arranged by subject. Photographs used as illustrations in Ireys' books are filed under the client name, if known. When the client name is unknown or the photograph is of a garden designed by someone other than Ireys, the photograph is filed under the title of the book.

SERIES VI. PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE (1936-2000, n.d.) 1 linear ft.

This series consists of professional correspondence not associated with specific garden designs. Included is correspondence with nurseries, contractors, suppliers and photographers. It is arranged alphabetically by subject of the correspondence.

SERIES VII. SPEECHES (1941-91, n.d.) 2.5 linear ft.

This series consists of texts, correspondence, notes, publicity materials, and handouts prepared for speeches. The series includes only a few fell texts of speeches, as Ireys was much more likely to speak from outlines or notes. The materials are arranged chronologically. General and undated handouts, arranged by subject, are filed at the end of the series.

SERIES VIII. TEACHING (1940-94, n.d.) 2.25 linear ft.

This series consists of correspondence, handouts, notes, outlines, publicity materials, testing materials, and some texts of lectures. The materials are arranged alphabetically by institution.

SERIES IX. WRITINGS (1941-1991, n.d.) 2.25 linear ft.

This series is divided into three subseries: Correspondence consists of general correspondence with various publications about potential writing projects; Articles consists of correspondence, and drafts and texts of articles filed alphabetically by title; Books consists of notes, outlines, drafts, publicity material, illustrations, and sales and royalty information related to Ireys' published and proposed books, filed chronologically. Photographs used in the books are located in Series V. PHOTOGRAPHS.

SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

SERIES II. CLIENT FILES

SERIES III. FINANCIAL

SERIES IV. MISCELLANEOUS PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

SERIES V. PHOTOGRAPHS

SERIES VI. PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE

SERIES VII. SPEECHES

SERIES VIII. TEACHING

OVERSIZE MATERIALS (BOXES)

OVERSIZE MATERIALS (FLAT FILE)

OVERSIZE MATERIALS (ROLLED DRAWINGS)