Julia Lester Dillon

By: James Pirch

Early Life

Julia Lester Dillon was born 1871 in Warren County, Georgia and grew up in Augusta, Georgia. She studied at Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) in Nashville to prepare for a teaching career. She moved back to Augusta and married William Bennett Dillon who was also in academia. Two short years after their wedding, William passed aways, forcing Julia to become independent widow.

Due to an onset of hearing loss, she was forced to find additional sources of income, including writing and becoming a stenographer. Giving up her teaching career, Julia was determined to find an occupation where her physical disability would not be an obstacle. Her love of gardening persuaded her to begin studies in landscape design taking courses at Columbia University and Harvard.

Work and Career

Julia returned to Augusta and started her private practice in August - Dillon’s projects included residential landscapes and work in the public sector, including parks and school landscapes. Julia’s career blossomed with commissioned work, and from 1914 to 1917, she completed commissions for post offices and custom houses for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  

After World War I, she participated in the design of war memorials; her most significant commission was the 1920 design of Memorial Park in Sumter, South Carolina, for the Sumter City Council. This project led to her full-time appointment as city landscape architect, the only woman in the U.S. to hold such a position, a position she held until 1948. Julia’s obituary states she was the co-author of naming Augusta the “Garden City of the South,” a title that the city retains to this day.

Over the course of her career, Dillon wrote and published several articles and pamphlets. In the 1910s and 1920s, she wrote about southern gardens for The Florists’ Exchange, House and Garden, and The Flower Grower. Her 1922 book, The Blossom Circle of the Year in Southern Gardens, which gave advice to amateur southern gardeners (much of it directed at women), established her reputation as an expert on the topic.

She then wrote a pamphlet entitled Landscape Design – Twenty Lessons and served as Home & Garden magazine’s Southern Garden Editor from 1911 until 1916. Julia also inspired garden club work, promoting the founding of the Sumter Garden Club in 1927. The club grew to 100 active members in 1950.

Legacy

While not a traditional architect, Julia Lester Dillon's dedication to landscape architecture and her trailblazing efforts in a male-dominated field left an indelible mark on the southern United States. Her work not only beautified public and private spaces but also inspired future generations of women in the profession. Described by others as strong, independent, and persevering, Julia Lester Dillon became one of the first authorities on southern landscape architecture. She was recognized as a Georgia Woman of Achievement in 2003, 44 years after her death. Julia's life story is a testament to resilience, innovation, and the transformative power of landscape architecture in shaping our communities.

Read more about her journey in the Spring 2001 Issue of Magnolia by Southern Garden History