Frances Rollo Wilkinson otherwise known as Fanny Wilkinson was Britain’s first female landscape gardener. Born a doctors daughter from wealthy parents Fanny was the eldest of her six siblings. She was born on the 6th June 1855 and spent a lot of her childhood growing up at Middlethorpe Hall in York. Running freely through the beautiful grounds and gardens had an everlasting affect on her which became her inspiration to become a landscape gardener. After her father died Fanny decided to enrol on a 18 month training course at the Crystal Palace School of landscape gardening and practical horticulture. However, being born in Victorian England when Landscape gardeners were generally only a male, Fanny was the first female to be recorded on the training course. After she completed her course she took on many jobs but insisted that she worked only with her own men that she employed. Eventually she made a name for herself and in 1884 she became a honorary landscape gardener.
One of Fanny’s childhood friends was Octavia Hill who was one of the three founders of the National Trust along with Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley. Octavia and her sister Miranda employed Fanny as the landscape gardener for the Kyrle Society and MPGA . Fanny was responsible for many open spaces and landscapes across the capital creating beautiful open spaces and gardens. It is said she had worked on over 75 public gardens for the MPGA alone. After she left working for the MPGA sometime after 1902 she became the first female principal of Swanley Horticultural College in Kent. Fanny also worked hard in in campaigning for women’s rights and encouraging women to get more involved in landscape gardening. She became the founder of the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union which was renamed in 1916 as Women’s Farm and Garden Union. There was a demand for educated women to work on the farms during the WW1 and Women’s National Land Service Corps recruited many of these women.
Fanny never married or had children but she spend her retirement breeding goats living near her sister Louisa who had married a brother of Millicent Fawcett. Fanny died at an old age of 95 on the 22nd January 1951.
