William Robinson could be called the grandfather of modern gardening, with John Claudius Loudon as great grandfather. Loudon’s work is pretty remote today: Robinson’s though is among us still, (he founded, with Gertrude Jekyll, the original The Garden magazine) and at his own house, Gravetye Manor, is palpable and ready for us to admire.
Gravetye is now a luxurious hotel. It’s Robinsonian origins and detailed story are precisely spelt out, and plants he describes in his writings lovingly preserved and reproduced. He died here in the year I was born: the grandfather feeling is not inherently absurd.
As a lad in Ireland in the 1880s he worked in the gardens of Curraghmore, near Waterford, the estate of the Beresfords, Marquesses of Waterford, where my own great great great grandfather Owen Johnson was steward in charge of the estate in the 1830s. It’s not impossible that grandpa and Robinson shared a pot of tea.
Gravetye before Robinson’s arrival was almost a wreck, the house not lived in, the grounds overgrown. Characteristically he recorded everything he did in modernizing and beautifying the hundreds of acres, planting thousands of trees to create what are now maturing beech and oak woods. From the terraces of the house, indeed, the views are entirely Robinson’s creation. The terraces look down on the lake he created. Higher on the hillside is his circular walled kitchen garden, now again in applepie order. Credit for the initial restoration belongs to Peter Herbert, formerly of the De Vere Hotel in Kensington.
All round the house itself you walk through degrees of what Robinson called ‘wild’ gardening – though the walled garden west of the house is scarcely what anyone else would call wild. Tulips are something of a speciality here. In April they dominate the borders near the house (the dining room is separated from them only by a simple glass wall). Blue is not a common colour in tulips, but a lovely one new to me called Bleu Aimable is now on my list of bulbs to plant this autumn.
