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

While Robinson was fine-tuning his flower gardens, he was assiduously buying up neighbouring farms and woods. His great love, especially in later years, were Gravetye's carefully managed woodlands, broadcast with colonies of native plants, including thousands of daffodils replanted annually--in 1897, for instance, he planted 100,000 narcissi along the margins of one of the lakes. Over the years he added untold numbers of trees and shrubs, some of which came from Sargent, Olmsted and other American friends. On the south side of the manor house, he planted a large alpine meadow with masses of scillas, daffodils, anemomes and fritillarias. Luscious full-plate photographs in his book Home Landscapes (1914) attest to Gravetye's sylvan beauty. (20)

On higher ground, near the north face of the manor house, Robinson developed an azalea bank and, higher still, a garden devoted exclusively to heathers, separated by a traditional bowling green (Fig. 9). Above that he built an unusual oval-shaped walled kitchen garden that continues to provide the hotel with fresh produce. The east garden, off the entry court, was devoted to magnolias and other ornamental trees and shrubs, including a rare specimen, Davidia involucrata (Dove Tree), first introduced from China in 1904. Gravetye's water garden boasted one of the largest collections of waterlilies in Europe, including a special tank devoted to rare specimens acquired from the French breeder Latour-Marliac.

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

In the belief that Gravetye's gardens were 'full of pictures', Robinson invited several landscape painters to paint them. 'I have worked long and hard to prove that the garden, instead of being a horror to the artist, may be the very heart of his work,' he commented. (21) The English watercolour artist Beatrice Parsons, who captured the dazzling quality of the west flower gardens in several paintings (Fig. 10) was just one of many artists who flocked to Gravetye. Among Robinson's favourite artists, however, were Alfred Parsons RA (Fig. 3) and Henry G. Moon, who captured some of the more subtle aspects of Gravetye. Both were recognised artists who were among the many who contributed illustrations to Robinson's books and periodicals.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

Parsons, himself a garden designer, illustrated one of the later editions of The Wild Garden as well as serving as a regular artist for the The Garden, The English Flower Garden and other publications. (22) His output as an illustrator, in particular for the American publication Harper's Magazine, was enormous, but he was known mainly for his association with the Broadway Group, a coterie of American artists, including John Singer Sargent and Edwin Austin Abbey, with whom he shared his home. Henry James was particularly enchanted with Parsons' work, commenting in 1889 that it 'forms the richest illustration of the English landscape that is offered us to-day ... One would like to retire to another planet with a box of Mr Parsons' drawings and be homesick there for the pleasant places they commemorate.' (23)