30 minutes from London, one of England’s most groundbreaking historical gardens is featured in a gorgeous new book.

Set in 1000 acres of the bucolic Ashdown Forest in Sussex (home of Winnie-the-Pooh’s fictional Hundred Acre Wood) sits one of the most important historical gardens in England. Also on-site is one of England’s oldest country house hotels, Gravetye Manor Hotel, with its glass-walled Michelin starred restaurant and view of the 30-acre Garden.

Though not open to the public (only hotel and restaurant guests can tour it), now a new book from Rizzoli, Gravetye Manor: Or 20 Years’ Work Around an Old Manor House, gives the world a glimpse of this groundbreaking wild garden in the Arts and Crafts style. 

The book republishes the original 1911 manuscript of the garden’s creator, influential gardener and writer William Robinson, known as the father of the English flower garden, and as the Irishman who taught the British how to garden. New colour photography and a foreword by current head gardener Tom Coward (who formerly worked on grounds belonging to Paul McCartney) bring the book up to date.

THE FIRST WILD GARDEN

Robinson first acquired the garden in 1885, during the Elizabethan era. He is the progenitor of the wild garden concept, where nature, not the humans who tend it, is in command, thus overthrowing the staunch, geometric Victorian gardening style. Robinson also introduced the idea of the mixed herbaceous garden border (still popular today with influential Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf) and the currently en vogue meadow garden. 

The garden lends itself to photography, as it is planted in cinematic vignettes, both wild and planned. A spectacular white wisteria walk under a pergola, a meadow filled with wildflowers including native orchids and buttercups, carpets of perennials, azaleas and hardy winter heathers, all underplanted with naturalised narcissi, are just some of the picturesque features one encounters. A walled kitchen garden, a heather garden, a croquet lawn and a water garden dense with water lilies are all original to Robinson’s landscape design.

Unlike Victorian gardens full of showy summer perennials, the garden is designed for year round interest. In early spring, hundreds of Lupins, Irises, Alliums, and Angelica lend a lemon yellow and sky blue colour story. Next come the wild tulips (another signature of Robinson) and native bluebells. All around the garden are the dark red spires of Red Feathers (Echium russicum) which made a splash at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show when Coward showed them.

According to Robinson’s philosophy, the garden eschews topiaries, parterres, and  fountains – in Robinson’s own words, “accepting nature as a guide.”