Introduction to William Robinson and the Expanded Edition of The Wild Garden First published in 1870 and evolving through seven editions in William Robinson's lifetime (1838-1935), The Wild Garden promoted an authentically naturalistic and genuinely low-maintenance approach based upon Robinson's considerable experience as a gardener, a botanist, and a direct observer of diverse habitats. The book was ground-breaking and hugely influential in its day, and is stunningly relevant to twenty-first century gardeners and landscape stewards seeking to combine esthetic design with dynamic biological diversity and sustainable management practices. Rich with humor and strong opinion, The Wild Garden 's text is full of spirit and speaks of Robinson's enormous personal energy. A prolific writer and editor, the Irish-born Robinson made a successful career of telling the English how they might be more practical and imaginative gardeners--no mean trick in any day. When The Wild Garden first appeared, the prevailing taste in British and European Continental garden design was for meticulously contrived displays of tropical annuals newly introduced from South America. Robinson's condemnation of this style as rote and wasteful was highly controversial and yet his vision of gardens based upon flowing arrangements of locally adapted winter-hardy plants eventually triumphed and has proved the most enduring. Robinson's lifelong friend Gertrude Jekyll was strongly influenced by The Wild Garden , and her own garden at Munstead Wood and many of her designs for others heartily embraced approaches outlined in The Wild Garden . Robinson's philosophies benefited from being very much in sync with the increasingly popular British Arts and Crafts movement's ethics linking beauty with utility and promoting an appreciation of local materials and patterns. England's increasing industrialization was re-making much of the countryside and eliminating or modifying beyond recognition many of the semi-wild places previously taken for granted. Robinson's idea of conserving some of this wildness within gardens was well-reasoned and well-timed. Though Robinson was just thirty-two when the first edition of The Wild Garden appeared, he brought to it a wealth of experience and knowledge. Robinson's professional career began in Ireland, as a gardener for the private estates Curraghmore House and, later, Ballykilcavan. He left Ireland for England in 1861 armed with a letter of introduction from David Moore, the director of Ireland's National Botanic Garden in Glasnevin, Dublin, and secured a position with the Royal Botanic Society's garden in Regent's Park, London. Robinson was responsible for the herbaceous plantings, which then included a small section of British wildflowers. Here he began developing his extensive field knowledge of the English flora, exploring the countryside to study plants in their habitats and to collect material for the garden. In 1863 he received support for a month-long tour of botanical gardens and nurseries in England, Scotland, and Ireland which considerably broadened his knowledge of the world's flora in cultivation. Robinson's career as a writer began in earnest that year with a long series of articles describing the tour, running until 1865 in The Gardener's Chronicle . His further touring, writing, and work for the Royal Botanic Society obviously made a fine impression among his peers: in 1866 he was elected as a Fellow of the Linnean Society, his nomination sponsored by Charles Darwin and many other preeminent British scientists and horticulturists. Later that year Robinson resigned his position at Regent's Park to devote himself to further studies and to his ambitions as a writer and publisher. Long visits to France beginning in 1867 resulted in Robinson's first two books; Gleanings from French Gardens (1868) and The Parks, Promenades and Gardens of Paris (1869). His 1868 travels were devoted to high mountain and alpine habitats in France, Switzerland, and Italy, and from these Robinson produced Alpine Flowers for English Gardens , published in 1870, the same year as Mushroom Culture and The Wild Garden . Robinson also sailed to North America in August 1870, traveling by train across the continent and back just a year after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed. He returned to England in December, and although this was too late to provide material for the first edition of The Wild Garden , his observations of diverse North American natural habitats and the connections he made with leading botanists deeply informed his subsequent writing and books, including the fifth edition of The Wild Garden . In New England Robinson met Harvard's Asa Gray, who was then the leading expert on the North American flora. In New York he visited Central Park, just then nearing completion, with its superintendent and principal designer Frederick Law Olmsted. Robinson got his first glimpse of the desert on his way to California, where he explored the high Sierras with the assistance of California's great botanists Albert Kellogg and Henry Bolander. In 1871 Robinson launched his weekly journal, The Garden , and served as its editor for twenty-nine years. Devoted to a wide array of garden and landscape subjects, The Garden drew from Robinson's extraordinary connections and included contributions from many of the period's most knowledgeable, progressive thinkers and doers. He began using engravings done from original works of accomplished artists to illustrate The Garden , a practice he eventually introduced to his books. The second edition (1881) of The Wild Garden benefited greatly from this, with its pages enlivened by nearly a hundred illustrations by British artist Alfred Parsons. The exquisite line drawings and engravings from Parsons' paintings portrayed individual plants and broad landscapes and were retained in all later editions. Robinson was clearly proud of The Wild Garden and recognized the enduring relevance of the concept. Many of his later books included a chapter on the wild garden, including his immensely successful title The English Flower-Garden (1883) and The Garden Beautiful: Home Woods, Home Landscape (1906). Excerpted from The Wild Garden: Expanded Edition by William Robinson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
