Ann Leighton was the professional name of Isadore Smith (1902-1985), the renowned garden historian, scholar, author, designer and landscape architect who, with Catherine C. "Kitty" Weeks, designed the colonial-themed gardens at the Weeks Brick House in Greenland, New Hampshire, in 1977. Among many commissions, Smith designed the garden at the 1677 Whipple House in Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is owned by the Ipswich Historical Society. Smith neatly summed up the staying power of her subject matter in a brief book-jacket teaser: "While buildings may decay and crumble, the plants of every age are still with us and need only to be collected and replanted to speak for the time and its people."
