Pioneer Information
Born in Summit, New Jersey, Wodell attended The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, graduating in 1908. Around 1924 she began creating gardens for friends and neighbors in Short Hills, New Jersey, who had noticed Wodell’s flair for planting design. Having a gift for design but lacking in business skills, she asked her younger sister Lois Page Cottrell for her assistance. In 1931 the sisters established the firm Wodell & Cottrell, Landscape and Garden Consultants. Most of their practice consisted of private residential design. In 1948 she brought her daughter Lois Wodell Poinier into the firm, retiring the following year. She continued to consult through the 1960s in and around Summit, New Jersey.
In addition to designing gardens, Wodell also wrote prolifically about garden design, flower arrangement, and a wide variety of decorative art subjects. In 1928 she authored a children’s book entitled Beginning to Garden. In 1933 she published the article “Garden Houses Old and New” in House Beautiful in which she provided suggestions for practical garden architecture, such as playhouses and gazebos. She frequently gave lectures on garden design, flower arrangement, and flower show staging at garden club and other civic association meetings. Wodell died at the age of 82.
