Richard Bisgrove recently retired as Course Director in Landscape Management at the University of Reading. He has a BSc in Horticultural Science from Reading University and an MLA in Landscape Architecture from Michigan. He served on the National Trust's Gardens Panel for nearly twenty years and has held several posts in the Garden History Society. In 2004 he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society for 'outstanding contributions to horticultural education, garden design and plant research' and in 2010 the President of the Landscape Institute conferred on him the Peter Youngman Award for 'outstanding contributions to landscape'. He lectures internationally and has written several books on garden design, including William Robinson: The Wild Gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008), The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln 1992), and The National Trust Book of the English Garden (Viking, 1992).