David,
Here's one source, at
http://www.worldiris.com/public_html/ROOTS_Articles/MHWLloyd2webI think it's interesting how HG was referred to as a "financier".
I think it's equally interesting that the property for Allgates was purchased in 1910, designed in 1911, and opened in 1912.
I think we better look into this Wilson Eyre guy....besides the suspicious name, there is no way this hack Philadelphia architect could have designed Allgates without some help from Stanford White.
Mary Helen Wingate Lloyd enjoyed her gardens at Allgates, her estate near Philadelphia, and well she might, for it was a lovely place indeed, with the Rose Garden bordered with apricot violas, the sunken Blue Garden with its narrow rill of water, the Frog Terrace with oversized bronze frog sculptures flanking an oblong pool, the Primrose Path leading toward the greenhouse, a sheep meadow in the middle distance through which one walked to the rustic Quarry Garden, fine stone steps and balustrades, and, immense in the landscape, the Iris Bowl, arguably the most famous private American iris garden of its time.
Unlike many gardens of the wealthy in the 'twenties in which the hands of professionals and underlings created venues for al fresco social activities and conspicuous consumption, the formal gardens at Allgates were clearly Mrs. Lloyd's, and, although she certainly employed assistance, her vision of horticultural beauty infused them, and her own hands, holding her own tools with the handles specially painted blue, cultivated her plants. Let us meet her.
In the Bulletin of the Garden Club of America for February, 1936, a special memorial edition devoted to Mrs. Lloyd, we learn that before her marriage to Horatio Gates Lloyd, a financier who would become President of the Commercial Trust Company of Philadelphia, and later a partner in J. P. Morgan and Co., she was Miss Wingate of Brooklyn, a "cosmopolitan" young woman, "active in many organizations allied with painting and horticulture." She "took an active part in the campaign for woman's suffrage and was also interested in the cause of birth control." As a mature woman she was loved for her vitality and charm and respected for her "intellectual curiosity," her "independent spirit," and her love of beautiful things. She collected rare antique horticultural books and studied art. Gardens, books, and painting were her abiding joys.
Mrs. Lloyd's horticultural affiliations were many. Her own garden club was among the founding clubs of the Garden Club of America, an organization created in 1913 to encourage horticultural education and preservation of the nation's natural beauty. This mission she explained eloquently in a 1925 article in Good Housekeeping in which she reminded the reader that "the great wild garden ... our fields and roadsides" must be cherished, for it is "Everybody's Garden." In recognition of her exceptional knowledge of the subject, she served for many years as editor of the Plant Material department of the GCA Bulletin and wrote insightful articles on a variety of genera, including the Iris. She served as a Director of GCA from 1928 to 1933, and rose to First Vice-President, the position she held at her death on September 23, 1934. She was also active in other plant societies, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the American Iris Society. An organizer and charter member of AIS, Mrs. Lloyd served as a Director from 1921 to 1930.
Allgates itself, located in Haverford, is an estate which in the Lloyd's time extended to approximately seventy-five acres, including a one room schoolhouse and the Frog Tavern, both survivors from the eighteenth century. The house was designed by Wilson Eyre, a noted Philadelphia architect, and was completed in 1912. It is an irregular gabled structure of stucco over stone ranging from one to three stories with sunny gardens descending in generous terraces from the rear. The gardens were redesigned in 1919-20 with the assistance of Horace Wells Sellers, architect, but the planting schemes then, and later, were conceived by Mrs. Lloyd. The several garden areas were exceptionally successfully orchestrated. Formal yet intimate, they were united by a common major axis, repetition of color, water features, and the use of modern figurative sculptures of children at play. Today, Allgates is on the National Register of Historic Places and the estate has recently returned to private ownership after having served as an educational institution for some years.