Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217214 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
A hard-working, compelling overview of one of horticulture's most vivid and successful communicators. --Garden

At long last we have an attractive and thoughtful book about William Robinson, one of the most influential garden writers of the early twentieth century. Mea Allan's earlier study (1982) makes for fascinating reading, but is dogged by myths and lack of documentation. Richard Bisgrove's new book is brought alive with beautiful colour photographs by Jerry Harpur, Andrew Lawson and others, but Robinson himself still remains an elusive figure. Unlike Gertrude Jekyll, there is no first-hand memoir by a dutiful nephew. It is known that William Robinson was born in Ireland in 1838, but it is still unclear whether it was in County Dublin or Queen's County (later County Laois). The circumstances surrounding his childhood are obscure, but he did work as a garden boy at Curraghmore. From there he went on to great acclaim in England, traveled, wrote dozens of books, edited many journals, and lived at Gravetye Manor in Sussex for fifty years before he died there in 1935. Where the fortune came from that enabled him to live as a country squire at Gravetye is still unknown. It certainly didn't derive from the proceeds of his writings and more likely came from shrewd investments and the property he owned in London. Bisgrove's book sheds little light on these and other biographical enigmas, but instead provides a fresh review of Robinson's prolific writings and editorial output.

Robinson's name was on the tip of every gardener's tongue from the mid nineteenth century through to the 1920s, but few people read his books today, mainly because they lack the spark of Gertrude Jekyll's ever-popular volumes. Whereas Jekyll was always modest and sympathetic to her readers, Robinson's fervent opinions and humorless writing style preached to rather than encouraged gardeners. Of all his publications, The Wild Garden (1870) and The English Flower Garden (1883) still enjoy popularity because they are filled with wisdom and offer inspirational advice that today's gardeners may find useful. Robinson's most influential book, The Wild Garden, lies at the heart of Bisgrove's and inspired its unfortunate --Hortus

Beautifully illustrated with photographs and contemporary drawings, William Robinson: The Wild Gardener is more than just a pretty coffee-table book - it is illuminating, well-researched and certainly not a hagiography. --House & Garden

Robinson is not a household name, but he is one of the most influential gardeners in history. More than 70 years after he died, his ideas of gardening resonate in domestic landscapes in temperate zones around the world. He championed the ideas of border plantings of hardy perennials, and of informal gardens that sought to harmonize with nature, not compete with it. These notions have come to define how we garden today.

No movement has momentum without targets, and Robinson famously railed against the prevailing Victorian mania for bedding annuals and the sterility of formal, architectural gardens.

Robinson was an opinionated and irascible visionary -- in short, a great subject for a book -- and Bisgrove finds lots of entertaining material in voluminous writings in a career that spanned decades.

Robinson (1838-1935) set forth his principles in two key books. "The Wild Garden," which espoused the transformation of weedy edges of the garden into meadows, woodland, etc., was first published in 1870 and still in print in 1928. The second, "The English Flower Garden," advised the relaxed form of planting throughout one's garden and was in print from 1883 to 1956.

Bisgrove argues that Robinson was not so much the inventor of the modern garden as its most effective promoter. In addition to his books, he founded several popular gardening magazines in London, and his visions of gardening also had great sway in the United States.

Robinson's implicit message was that gardens were about plants, which may sound obvious, but the history of gardening is marked by a debate between those who think gardens have become too wild and those who think they are too structured. --Washington Post

This attractive book is primarily an examination or Robinson's writings, a timely and welcome critique since many of his positions to hardy plantings, sustainable landscapes and the importance of urban public open space--are prominent in contemporary practice. This work will find its audience among garden historians and planting designers. The text is illustrated with beautiful images from multiple sources, including archival material from Robinson's publications and contemporary views of plants and gardens. -- Landscape Architecture

About the Author
Richard Bisgrove is the director of the Landscape Management degree course at Reading University. He has designed gardens in Britain and the United States and lectures internationally on the history of garden design and on the work of Gertrude Jekyll.