A simple detail but proper pronunciation of a name goes a long way.

WEST HOATHLY, England – The first time that I encountered William Robinson during my online surfing of ‘things gardening’ left me staring almost bamboozled at the name of his estate in southern England. I toyed with a conundrum of how to pronounce: Gravetye Manor. The pronunciation of the word ‘manor’ easily came to me. But ‘Gravetye’ caused me to scratch my head with indecision.

            After all, Winston Churchill supposedly said the British and Americans were separated by a common language. Miss Em at times will say that one of these days the British will learn to speak English – at times that quip falls into a category of ‘humor’ and sometimes I get a feeling she’s dead serious.

            My indecision fell into a decision of where to divide the syllables of ‘Gravetye’ into a semblance of phonetic correctness. I decided on three syllables: ‘grav-eh-tee’ instead of two: ‘grave-tie.’ Three syllables sounded smoother – to me. Two syllables sounded much harsher as if a speaker was attempting to pound a name of some importance through the air. Of course I was wrong – for many years. Until I heard someone say the name on a British gardening show either on television or on YouTube. It doesn’t matter which but I learned better.

            It is: GRAVE-TYE. I might have SMH or SMS after I heard it being pronounced by a native English speaker. What else could I do other than ‘shake my head’ or ‘shrug my shoulders’ – ‘oh well!’ I shan’t displease the lords of the nearly 425-year-old Elizabethan manor built around 1598 by an iron-master named Richard Infield for his wife. Infield’s family made their money by extracting iron from the same sandstone source used for the buildings. Robinson bought the manor with about 360 acres in 1885. By the time he died in 1935 his holding had expanded to more than 1,100 acres.

            Gravetye evolved into a horticultural experiment for Robinson to practice his ideas with a 35-acre garden installed around the manor house and inside a walled kitchen garden. But the focus of his contra-Victorian thought-provoking techniques went into the gardens around the manor house. He wanted to break the Victorian mold of planting in strict formal patterns using bedding plants in mass plantings. He wanted gardens to display plants in a natural setting that mixed plants one in complement to the other that accentuated their inherent qualities.

            Over the remaining acreage he planted trees with more wild gardens sprinkled throughout the property. Through the years he planted more than 10,000 trees including more than three dozen American trees sent to him by Frederick Law Olmsted. Through his foundation after his death he left the diverse collection of trees to the nation that is managed by the Forestry Commission.

            Between 1885 and 1935 his garden evolved with the introduction of new plants from around the world. Gravetye was not a static one-and-done garden to be maintained as it once was and will remain. Robinson spent his last 30 years gardening from a wheelchair to plant his next vision in his creation.

            The manor house has been operated as a luxury hotel for about 60 years under two management groups with the latest private ownership taking over around 2010. Technically it’s not a public display garden as can be found across the country. That meant we normally would not have an easy opportunity to see Gravetye and its gardens short of booking a stay at the luxury hotel or making a reservation to dine at the restaurant. Our tour took advantage of a late lunch in Gravetye’s Michelin Star restaurant followed by a walking tour of the garden.

             To set the stage for what we were about to see, Head Gardener Tom Coward spoke with our tour group about Robinson and the garden while we finished our dessert of Gooseberry Souffle’. Coward has been head gardener at Gravetye since 2010 leading a team of five gardeners overseeing garden operations.

            “In life he was one of the most famous people in England and one of the most influential gardeners who ever put pen to paper,” Coward said. “He wrote heaps of books… And he was a man way ahead of his time. But nowadays he seems to be better known in America than he is here.”

            Robinson’s reputation that has been recorded in biographies positioned him as a difficult man with an easily-provoked temper who often argued in person and on the pages of his magazines and books with the architects who stood on the principles of the formal Victorian garden. His wrote in his short book “Garden Design and Architect’s Gardens” about gardens “… in which both the design and planting were formal and stupidly formal…” His goal was to change gardening and Gravetye continues on using his principles.

            “Robinson didn’t want you to copy him – he’d probably become angry if you did – but he did want you to use the principles he developed,” Coward said, adding that the gardening ideas developed and put into practice by Robinson influenced “all of us.”

            Coward after training at the Royal Horticulture Society horticultural school at Wisley, as well as under Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, and at other gardens, took on a garden in 2010 that had fallen into disarray.

            “It’s been a renovation process with two emphases: one, to be a display garden for our restaurant, and, two, to further the heritage of William Robinson with a contrast between a formal garden and a wild garden,” he said.

            Robinson left his properties to the nation with the stipulation that they ‘never be used for teaching purposes.’ The Grade II historical site has been managed for the William Robinson Trust by Forest Enterprises for the Forestry Commission for nearly 90 years.

            Well worth making the time for a visit even if it does take special arrangements.

            (606 20221204)

            ©2022 James W. Humphreys. All rights reserved.