Travels in China: A plantsman's paradise

Abstract

Credit for much of the development of Western garden style is apt, all too simplistically, to be laid at the feet of just two people, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll. Robinson's TheEnglish Flower Garden (1883) and the flow of books by Miss Jekyll, from Wood and Garden (1899) to Old English Household Life (1925), combined with their copious magazine contributions, have had an extraordinary effect (not least in their current renaissance). It is difficult with the post-Jekyll production line in full swing not to see today's gardens through their eyes, albeit with the addition of the pink-tinged spectacles of their fashionable apologists.