Born in Ireland in 1838, Robinson was only nine when the Great Famine struck and began working as a gardener before he was even a teenager. Over the next few decades he worked in the gardens at Regent’s Park, travelled the world collecting plant specimens and published more than 70 books. When he was offered a knighthood in 1934, he politely declined it: “I felt I had to give it up after I had come to life, and so declined it with renewed gratitude,” he said.
After Robinson’s death in 1935 at age 96, he slowly faded away. But in his lifetime he transformed the very concept of gardens. “There are really two styles,” Robinson wrote, “one is simple-minded, mechanical, preferring walls, bricks or gravel…sprinkling plenty of water,” he writes, “characterized by a genuine sense of humility and right will…will accept nature as its guide.” The latter philosophy, based on conservation, plant ecology and native beauty, seems more a product of the 21st century than the 19th, but Robinson’s approach contains the seeds of the wild gardening movement.
No matter how harmonious with nature any garden is, it will require a certain level of maintenance. During World War II, Canadian soldiers were stationed in Gravetai (pronounced “grave-tee”)—and the gardens were abandoned. The house was developed as a hotel in 1958, but by the end of that era the gardens had fallen into disrepair. In 2010, new owners and new head gardener Tom Coward (who, according to him, had worked on Paul McCartney’s land for many years during his long career) reimagined Robinson’s vision. When Coward took the job, he faced a landscape full of perennial weeds, crumbling infrastructure, and ravenous deer (it has since been joined by a Michelin-starred restaurant, many of its ingredients sourced directly from the garden). There are challenges, too: “Since the hotel never closes,” Coward said, “we always have to be in top condition.”
More than a decade after Coward began working at Gravette, the gardens were in their heyday, and the images illuminated by Robinson’s text captured their brilliant greenness—creating not just a historical artifact but a garden of possibilities, a living guide. “What we are doing is taking it one step further and applying the principles of William Robinson without dogma,” Coward said. Coward explains that the garden changed constantly even throughout Robinson’s lifetime—until a visiting artist pointed out that the rigid fences created an unpleasant look in one section, and then he replaced it with roses and ironwood, with clematis taking its place. When Robinson began his life’s work—the only garden he truly created and designed for himself—he was afraid to add any bright colors. “The simple forms and colors of the house are so beautiful that everything should respect them,” he wrote in an early article.
In late spring, when Coward and I were talking, onions were nodding their purple heads and lustrous white wisteria was dripping from the pergola. But, somewhat surprisingly, Coward’s favorite month is February. In summer, he says, “you get completely overwhelmed; it’s the most beautiful time, but you can’t enjoy it.” And in Britain’s mild early spring months, when snowdrops and daffodils appear, “everything is possible.”
