Editing Edwin Lutyens (section)

===Private practice===
[[File:Munstead Wood, floorplan, fig 22 (Modern Homes, 1909).jpg|thumb|left|Ground floor plan of [[Munstead Wood]]]]

He began his own practice in 1888, his first commission being a private house at Crooksbury, [[Farnham, Surrey]]. During this work, he met the garden designer and horticulturalist [[Gertrude Jekyll]]. In 1896 he began work on a house for Jekyll at [[Munstead Wood]] near [[Godalming]], Surrey. It was the beginning of a professional partnership that would define the look of many Lutyens country houses.

The "Lutyens–Jekyll" garden had hardy shrubbery and herbaceous plantings within a structural architecture of stairs and balustraded terraces. This combined style, of the formal with the informal, exemplified by brick paths, herbaceous borders, and with plants such as lilies, lupins, delphiniums and lavender, was in contrast to the formal bedding schemes favoured by the previous generation in the 19th century. This "natural" style was to define the "English garden" until modern times.

Lutyens's fame grew largely through the popularity of the new lifestyle magazine ''[[Country Life (magazine)|Country Life]]'' created by [[Edward Hudson (magazine owner)|Edward Hudson]], which featured many of his house designs. Hudson was a great admirer of Lutyens's style and commissioned Lutyens for a number of projects, including [[Lindisfarne Castle]] and the ''Country Life'' headquarters building in London, at 8 [[Tavistock Street]]. One of his assistants in the 1890s was [[Maxwell Ayrton]].<ref>[http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200099 Ormrod Maxwell Ayrton] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120304021459/http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200099 |date=4 March 2012 }} at scottisharchitects.org.uk, accessed 4 February 2009.</ref>

By the turn of the century, Lutyens was recognised as one of architecture's coming men. In his major study of English domestic buildings, ''[[Das englische Haus]]'', published in 1904, [[Hermann Muthesius]] wrote of Lutyens, "He is a young man who has come increasingly to the forefront of domestic architects and who may soon become the accepted leader among English builders of houses".{{sfn|Muthesius|1979|p=55}}