Frank Clark was born in Manila in 1902 and was educated in England at Marlborough College and at Cambridge, where he was not an academic success. He left the university and travelled around Britain examining landscape gardens and architecture. He returned to Manila in 1923, but two years later departed for America after a family rift. He returned to England in 1931 with his wife, Felice. He was apprenticed in Percy Cane's office, working mainly on planting plans.
He was deemed unfit for war service in World War 2, but worked instead for the Civil Defence Light Rescue Reserve. He spent his free time researching 18th-century landscapes, and he began teaching at the Institute of Park Administration. After the war he took up additional posts at the universities of Liverpool and Reading. He also married again, Felice having departed for America in the early days of the war.
The English Landscape Garden was published in 1948 to great acclaim. Clark was appointed as chief landscape architect for the Festival of Britain in 1951. He became a fellow of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1951 and became president of the same in 1959. He was also appointed a senior lecture at Edinburgh University in the same year. He was a founding member of the Garden History Society in 1965. He died in Edinburgh in 1971.
BibliographyBrown, Jane, ‘Clark, Herbert Francis (1902-1971)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2006) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/96764?docPos=4 [accessed 21 June 2009]