Gravetye Manor: home of the Robinsonian garden: Judith B. Tankard explores the legacy of William Robinson, a key proponent of Arts and Crafts ideals in gardening. His work at his own home, Gravetye Manor in Sussex, is recorded by the artists with whom he collaborated on his influential publications

Apollo, April, 2005 by Judith B. Tankard

Gravetye Manor, an Elizabethan house near East Grinstead in West Sussex, and now a hotel, was once the home of one of the leading garden theorists of the nineteenth century. William Robinson (1838-1935) (Fig. 4), who ranks alongside Gertrude Jekyll in terms of influence, lived at Gravetye for fifty years, from 1885. In their heyday, the gardens and extensive woods surrounding the house burgeoned with thousands upon thousands of plants, earning Robinson the nickname 'Father of the English Flower Garden'. He was the champion of the naturalistic garden and an unswerving advocate for hardy perennials at a time when bedding-out with annuals was the accepted practice in British gardens. Among educated gardeners today, the term 'Robinsonian gardens' resonates as loudly as 'Jekyll borders.'

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Robinson was a complex man with many sides to his nature. In addition to being a prolific writer and editor, he was a connoiseur of art, an expert on forestry and an aficionado of historic houses. He numbered among his friends nearly all the leading botanists and horticulturists of the day as well as contemporary artists whom he invited to illustrate his publications. Even though he was a lifelong bachelor, his professional and personal acquaintances included such notable women as Ellen Willmott, Viscountess Wolseley and the American landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, in addition to Gertrude Jekyll. His most questionable attribute, however, was his reputation for being overly opinionated, a trait he shared with many other visionaries. His contempt for ineptitude as well as his disdain for those who held opinions contrary to his was legendary. Among his circle of friends, however, he was revered for his humour, charm and vitality.

Opinionated or not, Robinson built his reputation on his ability to market his exceptional knowledge of horticulture through his various publications--he was the author of nineteen books and editor of eight periodicals. Born in Co. Down, Ireland, of humble origins, Robinson quickly rose from a lowly under-gardener on an Irish estate to become one of the most respected voices in the horticultural world. (1) His youthful exposure to the cultivation of hothouse-grown exotic annuals for making fanciful but ephemeral floral patterns in large estate gardens drove him to look elsewhere for horticultural inspiration. He worked at a succession of jobs related to horticulture, including a six-year stint at the Royal Botanic Society's garden in Regent's Park that opened his eyes to the beauties of native plants. (2) His careful and deliberate study of hardy plants and gardening traditions took him to France, Switzerland, and America as well as the British Isles and brought him into contact with important figures in the horticultural world. His American contacts included the famed Harvard botanist Dr Asa Gray, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Sprague Sargent, founder of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. (3) In later years Robinson called upon many experts to contribute to the periodicals he edited.

By the time he was in his thirties Robinson was a full-time gardening journalist and was beginning to write books about the horticultural trends he had observed. His first two books dealt with the lessons to be learned from French gardens and in one of these, The Parks, Promenades and Gardens of Paris (1869), his lifelong phobia for pleaching trees and other unnatural uses of plants first surfaced. In 1870 he produced a seminal volume that would influence generations of garden-makers throughout the world. In The Wild Garden, Robinson championed the use of native plants in informal settings. His book opened many readers' eyes to the natural beauty of indigenous plants. Jekyll, for instance, consulted The Wild Garden when she developed her garden at Munstead Wood in the 1880s and 1890s and many Americans acknowledged their indebtedness to the book in their landscape planning.

Robinson's interest in the wild garden has sometimes been misinterpreted as an advocacy of wilderness, rather than of landscapes enhanced by the use of carefree hardy, native plants. As he explained in the preface to his book, 'I was led to think of the vast numbers of beautiful hardy plants from other countries which might be naturalised, with a very slight amount of trouble, in many situations in our plantations, fields, and woods--a world of delightful plant beauty that we might in these ways make happy around us'. He cautioned that the term 'Wild Garden' had nothing to do with the idea of 'Wilderness,' nor 'the sowing of annuals in a muddle'. (4) One of its manifestations was naturalistic sweeps of winter aconite, bluebells, daffodils or anemones multiplying by the thousands in woodlands (Fig. 1). (5) Gravetye's grounds remain an outstanding example of a 'Robinsonian garden'.

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With the founding of The Garden magazine in 1871 and Gardening Illustrated in 1879, journals he edited for years, Robinson hit upon an editorial goldmine. He drew upon his vast resources of professional colleagues and artists to contribute to these widely read magazines. A string of useful books, particularly The English Flower Garden (1883), compiled mostly from articles published in his journals, further buoyed his repute in gardening circles. (6) In short, he was the equal of no other personality in his day, except perhaps Jekyll, whose more lyrical books held sway on both sides of the Atlantic. Coupled with the success of his editorial ventures, Robinson's financial acumen, rumoured to have been based on substantial investments in London property, positioned him to become a man of property.