Elsa Bakalar was an English-born American garden designer

Garden designer

The term garden designer can refer either to an amateur or a professional who designs the plan and features of gardens. Amateurs design their gardens for their own properties. Professionals, with experienced skills, design gardens that benefit clients...

, best known for her 1994 book A Garden of One's Own.

Bakalar's work has been featured in Horticulture

Horticulture

Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

 magazine, The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...

, and Newsday

Newsday

Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...

, and she has worked with the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 Arnold Arboretum and the New England Wild Flower Society

New England Wild Flower Society

The New England Wild Flower Society is the nation's oldest conservation organization. Dedicated to the preservation of native plants, the Society operates Garden in the Woods, a native plant botanical garden, at its headquarters in Framingham, Massachusetts...

. She was born in England and came to the United States after World War Two. She was employed by the British Information Services ("BIS") and wrote occasional articles for Gourmet Magazine. Starting in the 1950s, she worked for many years as a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School

Ethical Culture Fieldston School

The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, known as "Fieldston", is a private "independent" school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. It has about 1600 students and a staff of 400 people , led by Dr. Damian J...

, first as a grade school teacher at Midtown (in Manhattan), then at the high school in Riverdale. She retired from teaching in 1977 and moved to Heath, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 with her husband Michael to devote herself full-time to gardening.

Published works

• Elsa Bakalar, Portrait of a Gardener [video] (OCLC 29672896, Images, 1993)
• A Garden of One's Own (ISBN 0-688-12145-4; Morrow, 1994)

External links

• "My Friend Elsa" by Pat Leuchtman