Pioneer Information
Born in Little Valley, New York, Scott (née Champlin) attended the University of Michigan, receiving her undergraduate degree in 1919 and a graduate degree in landscape design in 1921. A distinguished student, she was selected to complete a summer study at the Post Graduate Institute of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Lake Forest, Illinois. By 1924, she was an employee of the Cleveland, Ohio landscape architecture firm Pitkin & Mott, before starting her own landscape architecture practice in Cleveland with Elsetta Gilchrist Barnes and Lucille Kissack that focused on garden design. She married Phillip Scott in 1931. In 1934, as part of a Civil Works Administration-funded project to improve Cleveland’s public space, Champlin participated in the City Plan Commission’s Landscape Division, for which she recommended improvements at Forest Hill Park, originally laid out by A.D. Taylor, with the assistance of landscape architect Margaret Bell. With Barnes and Kissack, Scott wrote numerous articles on home garden design and maintenance for Real Gardening magazine. She died at the age of 95 in Cullowhee, North Carolina, and is buried at Saint David’s Episcopal Church Cemetery.
