THE PREACHER PRACTISING HIS PRECEPTS 



William Robinson Shows in "Home Landscapes" How 

 He Puts His Teachings into Effect in His Own Garden 



LEONARD BARRON 



;HEN the preacher essays to practise what he preaches, 

 he is as likely as not to reach somewhat short of the 

 ideals. Not so, however, in the case of William Rob- 

 inson, perhaps best known among us for his "English 

 Garden," whose teachings in naturalistic gardening 

 have set a universal standard and who in his country home is 

 able to indulge himself in the completed elaboration of the 

 principles that he has so forcefully promulgated during the half 

 century. 



Not so often as we should like to see it does the garden maker 

 have the opportunity of putting into effect in a place of his own 

 the principles that he enunciates. But then, in truth, many 

 who style themselves "landscape architects" can hardly be 

 called teachers of any positive principles in gardening, and to a 

 very large degree they make gardens to order to fit limitations 

 and clients over which they have no control and the given 

 works of any given practitioner may perhaps not be as fully 

 expressive of himself as he would. They must be accepted 

 rather as the practical solution of the combination of problems 

 which he had before him. 



For half a century now William Robinson has been preaching 

 the gospel of absolute and supreme naturalness in gardens, and 

 he has been able in an unusual degree at Gravetye (his fine Eng- 

 lish estate in Sussex) to develop his fancies to his heart's desire. 

 Here we have the artist painting pictures for his own delecta- 

 tion. Some of the results of this work Mr. Robinson has pub- 

 lished in "Home Landscapes" (2nd edition, London, John 

 Murray, 1920), a volume de luxe printed in large type on hand- 

 made paper with thirty-two full page plates, 9! x 7§. These 

 illustrations, splendid reproductions of photographs of high 

 technical quality, are selected to illustrate the methods and 

 principles by which he reclaimed the property from an unregen- 

 erate overgrown tangle and changed it into one of the most 

 gratifying, soulful plaisances of the Southwold country. Short, 

 explanatory, and descriptive text accompanies each plate. 



Supplementing the story of Gravetye is a selection of pictures 

 of typical famous English country houses in equally naturalistic 

 settings. 



Mr. Robinson all his life has championed the purely natural- 

 esque — even more the simply natural — as the one essential 



This gateway gives on to the heather garden, on com- 

 ing from the vegetable garden on the higher level, 

 and frames a view of meadow beyond the residence 



The residence nestles on a well defined hillside with meadow and lake below, 

 the flower garden extends to the right, with croquet lawn slightly above it 



principle of garden development. He calls himself a "land- 

 scape gardener" and admires and loves the expression with no 

 toleration whatever for the term "landscape architect," which 

 he considers "a contradiction in terms, and one of the most 

 stupid ever invented by man." Its creation is credited to the 

 French who "could not connect a gardener with anything artis- 

 tic and invented this compound name and rejected the English 

 one of landscape gardener which is the right one." 



"Home Landscapes" is a human document in which the 

 author bares his very soul and with it all tells by example and 

 precept how "English garden results" have been attained. 

 The reader may refer to The Garden Magazine for June, 

 1920, for several views of Gravetye and he will find other photo- 

 graphs, made recently, of some of the more intimate parts 

 of the garden accompanying these notes. 



Mr. Robinson believes that the flower garden should be kept 

 close to the house and that it may appropriately be treated in per- 

 fect association therewith and plants encouraged to grow naturally 

 in simple beds "without any fantastic and unplantable knots 

 and twirls. * * * If it seemed ridiculous in Pope's time 

 to design a garden on the plan of a bad carpet, it is many times 

 more so in our day in view of the flora of the northern and tem- 

 perate regions of the world, wholly unknown in the days of the 

 ancients to whom we owe our topiarian ideas." What a world 

 of truth and inspiring suggestion there is in this after all! What 

 a paucity of the material in our own country we actually use 

 when there is an abundance awaiting, almost clamoring, for 

 us to put into our gardens; whereas instead we adhere slavishly 

 to the materials that have been given us from foreign nursery 

 sources! 



Perhaps the one universal lesson that Mr. Robinson gives is 

 that good gardening consists in accepting the conditions of the 

 situation, taking them as they are, making roads and paths 

 where they wander most naturally, and planting thereabout 

 whatever is already by nature adapted to that particular kind 

 of situation. His credo is: 



I believe the best results can only be got by the owner who knows and loves 

 his ground. The great evil is the stereotyped plan, the poor results of which 

 are seen on all sides. But the man must love the work and know one tree from 

 another, and his pictures can only come from constant thought as to the ground 

 itself. Lessons? Yes, from Nature mainly. A few days in one of the side val- 

 leys of the Tyrol or any beautiful mountain land will tell more than many books. 

 Also pictures of the great landscape painters like Corot, Daubigny, Constable, 

 and R. Wilson when free of the conventions of his day, not because we want to 

 paint as we should beat them with living pictures. But the breadth, air, forms, 



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