Edith Foster Farwell: Lake Forest's Garden Sage

Changing The World Nature By Design
Edith Foster Farwell: Lake Forest's Garden Sage

Edith Foster Farwell (1893-1977).

Edith Foster Farwell’s garden at her home at 160 East Onwentsia Road, pictured May 1968.

Edith Foster Farwell’s garden at her home at 160 East Onwentsia Road, pictured May 1968.

A sample herb bed diagram included in Edith Foster Farwell’s Have Fun With Herbs, possibly based on her own garden.

A sample herb bed diagram included in Edith Foster Farwell’s Have Fun With Herbs, possibly based on her own garden.

From the 1956 Church of the Holy Spirit cookbook.

From the 1956 Church of the Holy Spirit cookbook.

Edith Foster Farwell’s interest in herbs began with a simple cost-benefit analysis. She and a friend ordered plants from a well-known herb grower in Washington D.C. to sell at a Lake Forest Garden Club show. But it cost more to buy and ship the plants than they made on the sale, which she found ridiculous. Farwell soon began growing herbs herself, and a life-long vocation was born.
She became an authority on growing herbs and using them for medicinal and culinary purposes, sharing her knowledge through lectures and publications. Her own garden on Onwentsia Road contained over 150 varieties of herbs, which she never sprayed with pesticides. By 1952, the Chicago Tribune called her garden “one of the country’s most famous.”
Edith Foster Farwell’s most popular work, Have Fun With Herbs, was published in 1958. “If you grow the herbs and learn to use them,” she wrote, “you will have opened up to yourself a whole new way of life which will be filled with delight and enjoyment.”She was married to Albert Day Farwell, mayor of Lake Forest from 1931-1934. An influential figure in the Chicago garden scene, she was one of the motivating forces behind the creation of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. She also had an occasional Chicago Tribune column about gardens and published multiple works, including My Garden Gate is on the Latch and the child-oriented The Fairy’s Garden.
Edith Foster Farwell was a natural choice for the Church of the Holy Spirit to ask for a salad recipe for their 1956 cookbook. As she noted in the Chicago Tribune, “A salad lacking the flavor of herbs is a dull affair.” Her recipe contains seven different herbs.