Some people love a good, blazing row. For them, nothing else puts a sparkle in the eye like the opportunity to deliver a few excoriating words from a nice patch of high moral ground, reducing (for the moment anyway) the adversary to a poor, foolish thing. William Robinson was such a person: belligerent, opinionated and cantankerous - and one of the most brilliant men to come out of the Victorian era. He was a gardener, garden designer, writer, publisher and campaigner in matters that ranged from promoting asparagus-growing to legalising cremation.
His ideas about gardening were revolutionary. He advocated - stridently - a natural and "true" approach to planting and designing. The garden should be "a reflex of Nature in her fairest moods". Plants should be grouped gracefully "in clouds instead of dots", and with respect for the contours and conditions of the site. "The best kind of garden grows out of the situation, as the primrose grows out of a cool bank." (A notion which seems to have just occurred to some of today's foremost garden stylists, demonstrating the cyclical nature of trends in design.)
Robinson was gardening and writing at a time when stiff Italianate gardens, sprinkled with statues, were fashionable and when vast bedding schemes of tens of thousands of tender annuals were an indication of the depth of the owner's pocket.
He detested these "pattern gardens", and denounced them as being made by "persons often ignorant of gardening". Carpet bedding, where "beautiful forms of flowers are degraded to the level of crude colour to make a design" was "no more interesting than an oilcloth pattern", while artificial mounds resembled "earth puddings".
No wonder he got up people's noses. The architect Edwin Lutyens dismissed him as a "foozle-headed old bore", and his greatest rival, Reginald Blomfield, a designer of extravagant formal gardens, constantly labelled him "stupid" and not an "artist" - the same charges that Robinson shot back at him with equal vigour.
In reality, Blomfield's and Robinson's own gardens were not as extreme as their writings, and both contained elements championed by the other. But their ongoing argument typified the indignant, preachy spirit of the era, and the pair of them happily ping-ponged contumelious articles and book prefaces back and forth.
But where did this ornery gent come from? From Ireland, of course. William Robinson was born on July 15th, 1838 in Laois - or was that Leixlip? Or Lucan? Actually, we don't know where he was born, nor can we be sure of the date. During his lifetime he was secretive (and perhaps misleading) about his origins, and to date, no record of his birth has been found, despite a number of searches - the most recent commissioned by Fingal County Council.
But wherever he was born, and whatever the circumstances of his early life (his father is believed to have deserted his wife and family to elope with a Lady St George), we know that in 1861 the young William Robinson arrived in London to take up a post at the Royal Botanic Society's garden in Regent's Park. From here he whizzed along his path in life with amazing swiftness, and before long he was in charge of the medical and herbaceous gardens at the park. It was here his passion for hardy plants was kindled - a passion that informed and drove his philosophy of natural planting, which he later expounded in his many books, including The Wild Garden and The English Flower Garden.
Within five years he became a fellow of the Linnean Society (one of his ten sponsors was Dr David Moore, the director of Glasnevin's Botanic Gardens), and he left Regent's Park soon after "to devote myself to the study of our Great Gardens and to the literature of horticulture for a year or two".
Amongst the gardens he visited and admired were Mount Usher in Co Wicklow, "a charming example of the gardens that might be made in river valleys" and Glasnevin, with which he was already acquainted. But he didn't like the new Palm House at all: "It is as if the demon of bad taste had built his temple in the central scene of a beautiful garden." (It was irrevocably damaged by gales about 20 years later.)
He went into publishing, and founded eight magazines, including The Garden, which he edited for nearly 30 years. Most of his 19 books were about plants and gardens, but he digressed to write texts on matters that aroused his concern, such as cremation, mushroom culture and wood fires (the latter because of the pollutant effect of coal).
By the time he died at 97 William Robinson was a very rich man. He left us with a legacy of ideas. The herbaceous border, for instance, was partly his invention. And from his great mind came the woodland garden and the naturalising of trees, bulbs and hardy plants in the landscape. Next Wednesday would have been his 160th birthday - if the date is correct.
An exhibition mounted by Fingal County Council: William Robinson - His Life and Times continues until the end of the month at Ardgillan Castle, Balbriggan, Co Dublin.
Diary Date: Today and tomorrow, 2-5 p.m. Garden open at Calluna, Church Lane, Greystones, Co Wicklow. Show vegetables, 50 different kinds of dahlia, and plants for flower arranging. Admission £2 in aid of RNLI.