Subscribe to Growing Greener on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon
This week Growing Greener takes a trip into history with Tom Coward, the head gardener at Gravetye Manor, the great garden and estate in southern England where “wild gardening” was invented. Created on the grounds of an Elizabethan manor house, the gardens were from 1885 the home and laboratory of William Robinson, an Irish-born gardener and writer whose books revolutionized English gardening – Tom Coward calls him “the Irishman who taught the English how to garden.” Robinson believed that plants should combine naturally and even spontaneously, and should be as much as possible self-sustaining. His book, “The Wild Garden,” became an enduring international best-seller and continues to be essential reading.
Tom Coward, who took over the care of the Gravetye gardens in 2010, rescued them from neglect, and has continued to restore and re-interpret them in light of William Robinson’s principles. These principles, Coward maintains, remain relevant and even essential today.
