Biography of William Robinson

William Robinson was born in Ireland in 1838 — the year after Queen Victoria took the throne, and the same year the first telegraph was sent. Not much is known of his early years, except for his Protestant upbringing, and that his father deserted the family during William’s early boyhood. Robinson studied later at the Glasnevin National Botanic Gardens, established in 1795. This 27-acre site along the Tolka River served as one of Robinson’s primary inspirations to pursue a life of horticulture. In 1867, Robinson was recommended to Regent’s Park in London, where he took the position of foreman for the herbaceous section of the Garden of the Royal Botanic Society. It had only been 30 years prior that Regent's Park finally opened to the public. Previously to 1835, it was a place of exclusivity and prestige, fulfilling its namesake as the "jewel of the crown." At the age of 23, Robinson had the unique privilege of contributing to beautiful spaces where common people could find respite.

In 1867 Robinson traveled to the continent to learn about French gardens. Out of this experience grew his first book, Gleanings from French Gardens, published in 1868. Though largely dissatisfied with the manicured look of the French gardens, he did appreciate their use of "sub-tropical" bedding. This discovery probably proved more influential in his life than he might have realized at the time, for it was his ability to integrate natural plants into arranged gardens that made him such a memorable figure in gardening. Robinson was instrumental in the gardening developments of the 19th Century, truly turning over new soil in terms of its landscape aesthetics. By bringing "exotic" plants in harmony with resident ones, flowers that were formerly seen to be invasive grew alongside the familiar, adding flare to the previously ordered and symmetrical.

Robinson published The Wild Garden in 1870, but what is said to be his most important work was The English Flower Garden, first published in 1883 and continually revised into 15 editions, culminating in 1933. This alone is evident of Robinson's wide-reaching influence. The first edition was a humble anthology of writers on the subject of gardening, with an introduction by Robinson. Later editions however came to be known for their oppositional nature; Robinson used the popularity of his book and the appeal of his rhetoric to thoroughly vilify previous gardening techniques. He wrote like he gardened, with avidity and a careful vehemence, which endured him to many. The English Flower Garden challenged a field dominated by formalism and the imposition of geometry on nature. Though his work may indeed seem passé in a contemporary gardening climate where emphasis on the natural is back in vogue. However it is important to remember Robinson in his era: a revolutionary designer who brought the wonderful chaos of nature to our backyards once again.

Robinson's ideas were instrumental in spawning the English cottage garden movement, often said to be a partner of the popular Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian era. The underlying belief inherent to both of these movements, social and aesthetic as they were was that simple was beautiful. Nature provided the colours, patterns, and processes with which humans were to work. The movement of design was in this direction, not the other. The Arts and Crafts and English cottage garden movements borrowed and profited from one another. Both celebrating organic design, the use of wood and stone, and items of superb quality, the movements happily coexisted, bringing honest labour and handicraft to speak against technology's ills.

At 29, Robinson became a fellow of the Linnaean society and a journalist for The London Times. He went on to write 19 books in total, spanning topics such as mushroom-growing and cremation. He became one of Great Britain’s chief ambassadors, and served as horticulture correspondent to the Times during the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Chronicling developments in gardening across the English Channel made him very popular with his contemporaries. His theories have been applied in North America and in other parts of the world as well, and as Dr. Tim Rhodus, of the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at Ohio State University puts it, "no student of British or American horticulture is well-informed unless he knows something of the life and times of William Robinson and his influences of changing English horticulture."

Robinson was a prolific publicist as well, generating two very successful magazines, The Garden and Gardening Illustrated in 1871 and 1879, respectively. In 1903 he founded Flora and Sylva. Gertrude Jekyll, whom Robinson met in 1875, was one of his most faithful contributors and friend. Herself an advocate of the naturalistic tendencies of the "wild garden," they developed a likely bond which went strong for over 50 years. They contributed actively to one another’s publications, and also got their hands dirty together, working diligently in each other’s gardens. Robinson attended Gertrude's funeral at the age of 94, a dedicated and faithful friend right until her last days. You can almost feel the wet soil between their fingers, and the spongy give of the earth beneath their knees, as they talked and joked together.

With earnings from his writing and publication, Robinson acquired Gravetye Manor in 1885. He eventually died there in May of 1935, probably the place where he would have most wished to pass: where his gardens still spill over into the rambling English countryside.