William Robinson (gardener) 612043 225151671 2008-07-12T04:11:56Z First Light 7217917 /* The English Flower Garden, 1883 */ editing for consistency here '''William Robinson''' ([[1838]] - [[1935]]) was a practical [[gardener]] and [[journalist]] whose ideas about wild gardening spurred the movement that is still recognized as the [[English cottage garden]], an outgrowth of the British [[Arts and Crafts movement]]. He advocated more natural and less formal looking plantings of hardy perennials, shrubs, and climbers, and reacted against the High [[Victorian era|Victorian]] patterned gardening, which used tropical materials grown in greenhouses, though in actual practice he was not averse to discreetly using some half-hardy plant materials. He railed against standard roses, statuary, sham Italian gardens, and other artifices common in gardening at the time. His garden style can be seen today at [[Gravetye Manor]], [[West Sussex]], [[England]], though it is currently more manicured than it was in Robinson's time. ==Life and Career== Robinson left his native [[Ireland]] in [[1861]], after working as a private gardener and at the National Botanic Garden at [[Dublin]], to take up a job at the Botanical Gardens of [[Regents Park]], [[London]], where he was in charge of the herbaceous ground and specialized in British wildflowers. In [[1866]] he left Regents Park to write for ''The Gardener's Chronicle'' and ''[[The Times]]'', and also represented the leading horticultural firm of [[Veitch]]. He became a fellow of the [[Linnean Society]] at the age of 29 under the sponsorship of [[Charles Darwin]], and began writing many publications, beginning with ''Gleanings from French Gardens'' in [[1868]], ''The Parks, Gardens, and Promenades of Paris'' in [[1869]], and ''Alpine Flowers for Gardens'' and ''The Wild Garden'' in [[1870]]. In [[1871]] he launched his own gardening journal, simply named ''The Garden'', which over the years included contributions from notables such as [[John Ruskin]], [[Oliver Wendell Holmes]], [[Gertrude Jekyll]], [[William Morris]], Dean Hole, Canon Ellacombe, and [[James Britten]].<ref>William Robinson: A Portrait by Betty Massingham from ''Garden History'', Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 61-85. Published by: The Garden History Society</ref> His most influential books were ''The Wild Garden'', which made his reputation and allowed him to start his magazine ''The Garden''; and ''The English Flower Garden,'' [[1883]], which he revised in edition after edition and included contributions from his lifelong friend [[Gertrude Jekyll]], among others. She later edited ''The Garden'' for a couple of years and contributed many articles to his publications, which also included ''[[Gardening Illustrated]]'' (from [[1879]]). The first meeting between him and Gertrude Jekyll was in 1875; they were in accord in their design principles and maintained a close friendship and professional association for over 50 years. He helped her on her garden at [[Munstead Wood]]; she provided plants for his garden at Gravetye Manor, an [[Elizabethan]] house on a large property which he was able to acquire in 1884 from the profits of his writings and garden design work. Its gardens have been restored in its current role as a hotel and restaurant. Jekyll wrote about Robinson that: <blockquote>...when English gardening was mostly represented by the innate futilities of the "bedding" system, with its wearisome repetitions and garish colouring, Mr William Robinson chose as his work in live to make better known the treasures that were lying neglected, and at the same time to overthrow the feeble follies of the "bedding" system. It is mainly owing to his unremitting labours that a clear knowledge of the world of hardy-plant beauty is now placed within easy reach of all who care to acquire it, and that the "bedding mania" is virtually dead.<ref>Massingham.</ref></blockquote> ==''The Wild Garden'', 1870== [[Image:Thewildgarden.png|thumb|right|250px|Drawing from ''The Wild Garden'' showing "Colonies of Poet's Narcissus and Broad Leaved Saxifrage."]]In ''The Wild Garden''<ref>''The Wild Garden: or the Naturalization and Natural Grouping of Hardy Exotic Plants with a Chapter on the Garden of British Wild Flowers'' was reprinted in 1983 (London: Century Publishing), with an introduction by Richard Mabey.</ref> Robinson set forth fresh gardening principles that expanded the idea of garden and introduced themes and techniques that are taken for granted today, notably that of "naturalised" plantings. Robinson's audience were not the owners of intensely gardened suburban plots, nor dwellers in gentrified country cottages seeking a nostalgic atmosphere; nor was Robinson concerned with the immediate surroundings of the [[English country house]].<ref>''The English Flower-Garden'' dealt with these garden areas.</ref> Robinson's wild garden brought the untidy edges, where garden blended into the larger landscape into the garden picture: meadow, water's edge, woodland edges and openings. The hardy plants Robinson endorsed were not all natives by any means: two chapters are devoted to the hardy plants from other temperate climate zones that were appropriate to naturalising schemes. The narcissus he preferred were the small, delicate ones from the Iberian peninsula. Meadowflowers included goldenrod and asters, rampant spreaders from North America long familiar in English gardens. Nor did Robinson's 'wild' approach refer to letting gardens return back to their natural state—he taught a specific gardening method and aesthetic. The nature of plants' habit of growth and their cultural preferences<ref>"[[Ecology]]" was not in Robinson's vocabulary.</ref> dictated the free design, in which human intervention was to be kept undetectable. Without being in any sense retrograde, Robinson's book brought attention back to the plants, which had been eclipsed since the decline of "gardenesque" plantings of the 1820s and 30s, during the use of tender annuals as massed color in patterned schemes of the mid-century. The book's popularity was largely due to Robinson's promise that wild gardening could be easy and beautiful; that the use of hardy perennials would be less expensive and offer more variety than the frequent mass planting of greenhouse annuals; and that it followed nature, which he considered the source of all true design.<ref>''Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century'' By Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. Dumbarton Oaks 1997. ISBN 0884022463.</ref> The book was dedicated to Robinson's friend S. Reynolds Hole, dean of Rochester, the "Dean Hole" of garden history, a connoisseur of hardy roses. ==''The English Flower Garden'', 1883== [[Image:Englishgarden.png|thumb|right|400px|Drawing from ''The English Garden'' showing "The Wild Garden: view in Moat Mead, Gravetye Manor, with Poet's Narcissus in bloom in early summer 1891, planted five years."]]In ''The English Flower Garden'', Robinson laid down the principles that revolutionised the art of [[gardening]]. Robinson's source of inspiration was the simple [[cottage garden]], long neglected by the fashionable landscapists. In ''The English Flower Garden'' he rejected the artificial and the formal, specifically statuary, topiary, carpet bedding, and waterworks—comparing the modern garden to "the lifeless formality of wall-paper or carpet." He had a profound respect for nature's infinite diversity, and promoted creepers and ramblers, smaller plantings of roses, herbaceous plants and bulbs, woodland plants, and winter flowers. Robinson compared gardening to art, and wrote in the first chapter: <blockquote>The gardener must follow the true artist, however modestly, in his respect for things as they are, in delight in natural form and beauty of flower and tree, if we are to be free from barren geometry, and if our gardens are ever to be true pictures....And as the artist's work is to see for us and preserve in pictures some of the beauty of landscape, tree, or flower, so the gardener's should be to keep for us as far as may be, in the fulness of their natural beauty, the living things themselves.<ref>''The English Flower Garden: Design, Arrangement, and Plans'', by William Robinson, 4th edition, London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1895, p. 8.</ref></blockquote> This book was first published in [[1883]], a compendium of articles by Robinson and other writers that included contributions from his close friend [[Gertrude Jekyll]]. The chapter on "Colour in the Flower Garden", except for the first few paragraphs, was written by Jekyll.<ref>William Robinson: A Portrait, by Betty Massingham, from Garden History, 1978. The Garden History Society.</ref> The last and definitive edition was published in [[1933]]. During Robinson's lifetime, the book found increasing popularity, with fifteen editions during his life. For fifty years, The English Flower Garden was considered a bible by many gardeners.<ref>The English Garden: A Social History By Charles Quest-Ritson</ref> ==See also== *[[Garden hotels]] ==Notes== {{reflist}} ==External links== *[http://www.gertrudejekyll.co.uk/index.phtml?page=81000 Capsule biography] *[http://www.ralphhancock.com/ Ralph Hancock website] *[http://hcs.osu.edu/history/history/092.html History of Horticulture website:] William Robinson *[http://books.google.com/books?id=kglJAAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage The Wild Garden] Google Books version *[http://books.google.com/books?id=Tj8AAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage The English Flower Garden] Google Books version {{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, William}} [[Category:1838 births]] [[Category:1870 books|Wild Garden, The]] [[Category:1883 books|English Flower Garden, The]] [[Category:1935 deaths]] [[Category:Members of the Linnean Society of London]] [[Category:English gardeners]] [[Category:Irish gardeners]] [[Category:Arts and Crafts Movement artists]] [[ja:ウィリアム・ロビンソン_(造園家)]]