Dunington, Lorrie Alfreda, 1877-1945 (landscape architect)
Biography
Lorrie Alfreda Dunington was born in England in 1877 and grew up in India, South Africa and Australia. Lorrie studied garden design at Swanley Horticultural College before opening an office in London and practising throughout the British Isles. In 1911 Lorrie married Howard Grubb (1881-1965) adopting the surname Dunington-Grubb, and emigrated to Canada. In Toronto she worked on her own, and in partnership with her husband, on private and public garden designs, town planning projects and design of garden suburbs, and helped to start Sheridan Nurseries. Lorrie lectured at the University of Toronto's Department of Social Service on the subject of housing and town planning and for the Ontario Department of Agriculture on the subject of city beautification. She wrote prolifically on garden design for magazines such as 'Canadian Homes and Gardens', 'Maclean's' and 'Woman's Century', was active in Toronto arts and letters society, and volunteered time and expertise to a number of organizations. Her activities were curtailed after 1928 by tuberculosis, but she was a founding member of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects in 1934, and president of the Society in 1944. Lorrie died at the Mountain Sanatorium, Hamilton on 17 January 1945.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
DUNINGTON, Lorrie Alfreda, c. 1900-1910
Single undated letter from Lorrie Alfreda Dunington to Ida Darwin. The letter expresses regret that she was unable to see Ida during a recent brief visit to Cambridge and that a female gardener employed by Ida - 'Miss Foster' - had proven to be unsatisfactory. Lorrie expresses her views on women gardeners and recounts some of her experience as head gardener on a large estate in charge of men.