Robert Goldie, Our English Gardener

Twenty years ago, Robert joined Jefferson Vineyards and has been creating and caring for our gardens ever since. Born in England, Robert will tell you his life has centered around travel and horticulture. He specializes in the English Cottage Garden style, a style characterized by bright blooms, full garden beds, and bustling ecological life. Cottage gardens are not manicured or meticulously planned but curated and designed with spontaneous personal preference and available bed space. They celebrate natural beauty and connection, the simple wonder that springs forth when you collect beautiful things, teeming with life, and disregard ‘ought to’ and linear ‘perfection’. In his gardens, Robert aims to surprise and delight the onlooker with an array of self-seeding plants. For eight months of the year, these gardens bloom providing habitat for pollinators, birds, and insects while organically controlling pests. Swallowtail butterflies lay eggs in the Bronze Fennel beside the patio. The bright green shoot barely reaching above the stoned wall most likely will have come from a parent plant across the parking lot. Each is allowed and encouraged to flourish. For us, the onlookers, the gardens burst forth in bright blooms – at once comfortable and strikingly beautiful.