Louise Beebe Wilder (January 30, 1878 – April 20, 1938) was an American gardening writer and designer whose books are now considered classics of their era.
[1] In 1902, she married architect Walter Robb Wilder, and the couple moved to Pomona, New York,[2] where she transformed the rural property (known as Balderbrae),[a] adding pathways, a pair of half-moon fountains, a grape arbor, terraces, flowering trees, a walled garden, and an herb bed.
[1] Later, they moved a bit further south to the village of Bronxville, where she designed Station Plaza and founded a local Working Gardeners Club (1925).
[1] Wilder wrote ten books about her experiences as a gardener that were popular for offering clear, explicit advice rather than flowery nature writing.
A New York Times editor called her a Romantic, but one "with a strong vein of scientific curiosity that she exercised on a domestic scale.”[1] Another New York Times editor, after noting that she was conversant with both classic British and recent American horticultural literature, praised her for the sharpness of her field observations.