Popularising Gardening: William Robinson and the Transmission of Garden Knowledge in the Illustrated Press

William Robinson (1838‒1935) was one of the most influential gardeners of the Victorian period. His publishing empire in particular can be considered as one of the strongest impetuses that fostered the self-definition of the British people as a nation of gardeners. Robinson’s journalistic work and editorial enterprises, rather than his landscape creations, have indeed contributed to the recording and cataloguing of a national tradition in the late 19th century by giving written and visual space—a voice and views—to an imagined community of gardeners. This paper will read William Robinson’s garden periodicals as a fertile ground from which a number of gardening practices, aesthetic forms and representations developed into shared customs. As such, gardening, gardens and landscapes emerged as an invaluable heritage to be preserved. I will first explain how his magazines opened a new space to a broader readership, a more diverse set of contributors, and even to other editors. This was accompanied by new ways of sharing and disseminating knowledge via text and illustration, which was largely co-constructed in popular gardening newspapers and magazines, further contributing to the creation of a sense of community among readers, and to the constitution of a shared ‘garden lore’. I will then ponder over the notion of collective horticultural heritage, which I suggest materialised in his publications out of the amalgamation of the myriad personal accounts, experiments, and views, and I will explain the extent to which this was attuned with modernity.