Julie Moir Messervy
Week of October 9, 2000

At Wellesley, Messervy channeled her athletic energy into the game of squash, and regularly took part in African and Jazz dance. Messervy's years as a student at Wellesley College coincided with a time of great political turmoil and protest. She participated in a student strike following the April 1970 United States military invasion of Cambodia. On behalf of the striking students, Messervy authored a letter to Wellesley's alumnae, explaining the strike. She recalls receiving but a few supportive notes amid a host of irate missives, in reply.

In her junior year at Wellesley, she realized that her academic and career ambitions wouldn't be satisfied within the confines of art history. Messervy was intrigued by the blend of "creativity with tangible results" which she discovered to be part and parcel of the field of architecture. She took advantage of Wellesley's nascent exchange program with MIT, and moved to that university's storied Senior House. She graduated from Wellesley, via MIT, in 1973.

Following her graduation from Wellesley, Messervy took a course with then adjunct professor of East Asian Architecture Gunter Nitschke at MIT. This led her to open the book Imperial Gardens of Japan; Sento Gosho, Katsura, Shugaku-in. (New York, Tokyo: Walker, Weatherhill, 1970). Reacting to the Japanese gardens depicted in the book, she, "..felt like they were natural, yet clearly created by the hand of an artist." She considers opening that book to have been a defining moment in her life.

Messervy was among the first Wellesley College students to become a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, through which she traveled to Japan to study Japanese gardens. She trained with garden master Kinsaku Nakane, first as a Luce Scholar, then as a Japan Foundation Fellow. Living in a Zen Buddhist nunnery, she moved rocks and prepared land as she studied Kyoto gardens. Nuns with whom she lived instructed her in Chaji, the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony.

While working toward her Master of Architecture and Master of City Planning degrees at MIT, she began teaching. First her students were fellow graduate students at MIT. Then, she taught in the Radcliffe Seminars program. Messervy completed the two masters degree programs at MIT in 1978, and taught landscape design at MIT's Graduate School of Architecture for a few years thereafter.

Messervy is a designer of residential, commercial and institutional gardens. Among the projects she has completed is the implementation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts "Tenshin-en," The Garden of the Heart of Heaven, which was designed by Kinsaku Nakane. Messervy designed Toronto's 3-acre harbourfront Music Garden, on which she collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Messervy's design of the garden was based on Ma's interpretation of the First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, by J.S. Bach. The six "movements" that make up the design of the garden reflect the structure, images and emotions that the music evokes. The entire project was captured in a film entitled "Yo-yo Ma: Inspired by Bach: The Music Garden," which is available on video.

Messervy is an international lecturer. She published her first book, Contemplative Gardens, Howell Press, Charlottesville,VA in 1990. Since then she has written The Inward Garden: Creating a place of beauty and meaning, Little Brown & Co,.1995 and The Magic Land: Designing your own enchanted garden, IDG Books, 1998. She recently completed a term as the Wellesley College Alumnae Association Academic Programs Chair. For the three years of her term ending in 2000, Messervy ran Summer Symposium. The topics were Creating Creativity, with faculty director Professor of Psychology Beth Hennessey, in 1998, Landscape Meaning Memory, with faculty director Feldberg Professor of Art Peter Ferguson, in 1999, and Origins and Endings, with faculty director Associate Professor of Biology Emily Buchholtz, in 2000.

She is an avid skier, skater, walker, reader, and of course, a dedicated gardener.

Julie Moir Messervy lives in Wellesley with her son Max, in his first year at McGill University, and her daughters, Wellesley High School students Lindsey and Charlotte, a senior and freshman, respectively.

Written by Mur Wolf