She was educated ‘privately and abroad’, but by the end of 1883 she had completed an 18-month course at the Crystal Palace School of Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture in London,[2] at a time when such classes were intended only for men.
In 1887 Fanny Wilkinson was also working as a landscape designer to the Kyrle Society, which aimed to ‘bring beauty to the lives of the poor’.
In 1902 she became the first female Principal of Swanley Horticultural College and in that post she encouraged other women to enter the profession.
In 2022 English Heritage announced that Fanny Wilkinson would be commemorated with a blue plaque at her former home in Bloomsbury, London, later that year.
She was nominated for the plaque by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, the organisation which kickstarted her professional career.