Cottage Garden - Landscape Designer

Rights and Images Dept National Portrait Gallery St Martin's Place London WC2H OHE

I am reading a fabulous book at the moment. Well, not reading-reading, more like dipping into, using the index a lot and looking at the pictures! 

The book is entitled The Wild Garden [expanded edition] by William Robinson – with new chapters and photography by Rick Darke. The original book was published in 1870 and “was ground-breaking and hugely influential in its day and is stunningly relevant to 21st century gardeners and land stewards seeking to adopt sustainable design and management practices”.  

​It was through re-watching the BBC television gardening series The Cottage Garden, The Paradise Garden and The Ornamental Kitchen Garden (that we converted to digital), that my adopted best-friend Geoff Hamilton (alas deceased) mentioned Mr Robinson and thus inspired, I obtained the book through Abe Books (website) at a very reasonable price.

So it seems that if you’re in the know and part of the gardening fraternity, William Robinson is known as the ‘Father of the English Flower Garden’.  So – now we’re in the know!
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A potted history (see what I did there!) of William Robinson:

• 1838:  William Robinson was born in Ireland and as a young man studied horticulture at the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin near Dublin.
• 1861:  moved to London and spent some time working in Regent’s Park.
• 1867: visited France which inspired him to write his first gardening book, ‘Gleanings from French Gardens’ (1868), criticising the formal nature of French gardens but praised the natural style of the ‘sub-tropical’ bedding. 
• 1870’s:  Robinson had an aversion to strait-laced garden design and was influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement, as pioneered by John Ruskin and William Morris.  The latter reacted against poor design and mass production as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and instead focused upon the revitalisation of traditional English handicrafts.
• 1870:  Robinson published two works, “Alpine Flowers for Gardens’ and ‘The Wild Garden’.
• o   Alpine Flowers for Gardens’ proposed planting species of alpine in small rock gardens, a practise which quickly caught on, becoming commonplace in many English gardens.
• o   ‘The Wild Garden’ encouraged the natural development of and respect for plant form, colour, growing habits and foliage rather than adhere strictly to a layout.  Advocating permanent planting rather than bedding plants and developing an informal garden by mixing native and exotic plants, swathes of bulbs in grass and use of colour was key in changing the focus to the English cottage garden that is the ideal for many today – 150 years later.
• 1871:  launched “The Garden” – a weekly journal and therefore reaching a wider audience with his naturalistic approach to gardening.
• 1880’s:  Through common interests and ideals he became friends with Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) another hugely influential gardener introducing the idea of informality and naturalness as opposed to rigid bedding schemes as seen in large Victorian formal gardens.  Cottage garden style is about cramming in as much planting as possible.

Robinson’s greatest written work ‘The English Flower Garden’ was published in 1883 and is still available today (I think I ordered a second-hand copy the other evening). He encouraged individuality and imagination, and the studying the interaction of plants, “how each one’s size, shape and foliage worked with the other to create a private, personal wilderness”.

Robinson became a most influential and respected gardener and horticultural writer, and the best example of his taste can be seen at his own garden at Gravetye Manor in Sussex.