Fletcher Steele
The Blue Staircase
It's the birthday of Fletcher Steele; an American landscape architect who designed over 700 gardens. He was born on this day in 1885.
His most iconic work was nestled into the Hillside in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts.
It's called The Blue Staircase at Naumkeag.
Steele designed the staircase for Mable Choate in 1926. She would become his most important client. She was 56 and he was 41.
Choate had a history of working with designers and she knew how to collaborate with them.
Steele was one of the first landscape architects to speak of plant material as one of the elements in a composition.
It was Fletcher Steele who said
"Gardening seems to be the most ephemeral of the arts."
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Fletcher Steele
