Our Gardens on Gardeners World!

The Botanical Gardens will feature on BBC Gardeners World this Friday (2 Sept) as part of an item on gardener and author William Robinson. Garden historian Advolly Richmond - who lectured for us earlier this year - called into the Gardens with a film crew earlier this month.

Robinson was famous for advocating ‘wild gardening’ - by which he meant using hardy exotic perennials and shrubs to create self-sustaining displays, rather than the Victorian passion for clipped shrubs and annual bedding.

And the link with our Gardens? Well, Robinson was a protégée of our first curator, Robert Marnock, when they worked together at Regents Park in London. Marnock described Robinson approvingly as ‘a zealous botanist’ and later gave him advice about the planting of his own garden at Gravetye Manor in Sussex.

Gravetye Manor by Howard Stanbury, under a CC license.