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In 1978, [Kelly Comras] visited the landscape architect Ruth Shellhorn at her home in Redondo Beach. [Kelly Comras] was there to learn about her professional life for a college project—little did [she] realize that [she] would someday write a book about this remarkable woman. During a career spanning six decades, Shellhorn had designed almost four hundred landscape projects — from department stores and college campuses to parks and private residences. A native Californian, she collaborated with some of her generation’s most influential architects and was a leader in shaping the Southern California design aesthetic. [Kelly Comras] had admired her landscapes since [her] teenage years without realizing that they began as designs on her drafting table.

Twenty-five years after our first meeting, [Kelly Comras] called Shellhorn hoping to find her well and agreeable to being interviewed for a personal writing project. To [her] surprise, she not only answered the phone but invited [her] to her studio. There, floor-to-ceiling cabinets held her original drawings on tissue or vellum—neatly labeled, alphabetically organized, and covered with the recycled plastic bags from which she removed her copy of the Los Angeles Times each morning. Her client files — each with detailed plant lists, correspondence, time sheets, construction schedules, and hand-drawn sketches — were filed and boxed by decade. [Kelly Comras] later learned that she kept copies of all the articles she had written, articles written by others, and photographs of her work in books and magazines. After Kodachrome was introduced in 1936, she began to take before-and-after color slides of her work. These, too, were carefully labeled and filed. Throughout her career, Shellhorn kept an alphabetically organized card file of her clients and had recently created a chronological client list as well. It was almost like visiting a museum exhibit, except that Shellhorn was still using the studio — consulting on private gardens and with long-standing clients, such as the University of California at Riverside.
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