Nichols was the daughter of Arthur H. Nichols and Elizabeth Fisher Homer Nichols, and a niece of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.[4] Her siblings included Margaret Homer A. Shurcliff (married to Arthur Shurcliff) and Marian Clarke Nichols. Rose Nichols lived most of her life at 55 Mt. Vernon Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston.
Nichols’ first commissioned project was her family’s garden at 'the Mastlands' in 1895, their summer home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Rose added a piazza and laid out a formal garden enclosed with low stone walls. The focal point of the garden was an apple tree that spread over a low pool and curving benches. This project was included in Guy Lowell’s book American Gardens (1902). She often designed in accordance with Beaux-Arts style, evident in her tranquil, cohesive and approachable garden designs. Nichols' designs appear in Georgia, Arizona and California, though most of her work appears in Lake Forest, Illinois. Many of her commissioned works appeared in Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest; A Preservation Foundation Guide to National Register Properties, Lake Forest, Illinois.[7] Nichols often collaborated with the architects David Adler, Mac Griswold and Howard Shaw.[8]
Author
Her 1902 book English Pleasure Gardens was followed by two more volumes, Italian Pleasure Gardens (1928) and Spanish and Portuguese Gardens (1924). These books were intended as guidebooks to Europe’s lesser-known gardens. Both English Pleasure Gardens and Spanish and Portuguese Gardens were illustrated with drawings by the author; Italian Pleasure Gardens was illustrated with photographs Nichols took in her travels. Nichols took advantage of her social connections to access and document private gardens all over Europe. She transformed these experiences into a career as a landscape architecture critic, publishing over fifty articles on European landscape design. These articles appeared in house and design magazines such as House Beautiful, Horticulture, and House and Garden.[9]
Activism
In addition to her professional work as a landscape architect, Nichols was a peace activist. She established a discussion group, The League of Small Nations; participants included Mabel Harlakenden Hall Churchill (wife of the American novelist Winston Churchill) and Edith Wilson. The group was a precursor to the Foreign Policy Association. Nichols also traveled to peace conferences in Europe.[3][10] In addition, she helped establish the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.[11]
In 1919 Nichols was elected an officer of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association.[12] In 1937, Nichols attended an event organized by the New York Society of the Descendants of Signers of the Independence Declaration.[13]
Portraits of Nichols have been made by Taylor Greer and Margarita Smyth.
^Eran Ben-Joseph, Holly D. Ben-Joseph, Anne C. Dodge. Against all Odds: MIT’s Pioneering Women of Landscape Architecture. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, City Design and Development Group, 2006.
^Transactions of the American society of landscape architects, 1909-1921.
^Coventry el al. (2004). Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest; A Preservation Foundation Guide to National Register Properties, Lake Forest, Illinois. Norton.
^Distilled: worth while affairs of the world filtrated in pleasing narrative; talks with the king and queen of Greece. New York Times, Jul 9, 1922; p.95
