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Latin names are used extensively. Anyway, his views were totally ignored by the scientific William and Dorothy Banks. In an eclectic but very real sense the early garden at Hergest Croft was a collaboration between Banks and Robinson. Taking The English Flower Garden as his guide Banks created a truly Robinsonian garden, perhaps even more for Robinsonian than Gravetye manor itself of which Hadfield writes: 'Far from leaving nature alone he moved away tons of earth to make a landscaped entrance. his strenuous efforts to naturalise the hardier herbaceous plants in his hedgerows and woods seem to have failed completely. Ironically enough his greatest successes seem to have been with florists' flowers tea roses, outdoor carnations, and violas in the more formal beds. Robinson was a prophet, a preacher, and a puritan full of didactic statements and unbreachable principles, moreover, like many such prophets, he is not entirely consistent in his views. The one thing that is, of course, abundantly clear is that he was a designer and he did create a style despite his denials! Probably the most important element in his style was his insistence on working on the ground rather than on paper. He writes: 'The garden was, as I think all gardens should be, marked out on the ground itself without the intervention of any plan.' This is the crucial distinction from the architectural garden designers whom he hated. Charles Barry, above all, was a villain for: 'endeavouring to adapt Italian modes to English conditions.' It is fascinating that one hundred years on that my wife, Elizabeth Banks, one of England's best-known landscape architects, believes that the most vital element in creating a garden or landscape is the final laying out on the ground itself directly in the tradition of Robinson. When William and Dorothy Banks came to Hergest one hundred and five years ago, they planted the original garden on clear Robinsonian principles and with many details taken directly from The English Flower Garden. The minor deviations are interesting but are no more than that. Hergest Croft is essentially a Robinsonian garden in its core and probably one of the very few to survive almost intact over a hundred years later. It is summed up in a sentence in the book about trees and shrubs: 'Those who have given a fair chance to the plants referred to need not care about garden coal bills [waste again!] contrast of colour as the beauty of flowering trees and shrubs will come to you year after year as certainly as the wind through the cherry blooms.' That, in my mind, is the magic of Hergest Croft, and the two magicians