This thesis is dedicated to the study of William Robinson's career and work as a garden journalist. As an Irish gardener and writer, he made his mark on the British history of taste and ideas in the latter part of the Victorian era by spreading a new garden aesthetics that broke away from High Victorian formality. Three paradoxes underpin this dissertation. Why has he become one of the most famous gardeners in the English-speaking world when he really designed very few gardens? Why has he gone down in history as the father of the English flower garden, when he overtly drew inspiration from France, emphasised his Irishness and advocated for the use of sub-tropical and exotic plants in gardens? To what extent can William Robinson be considered one of the first gardeners to promote a sustainable garden aesthetics, even though he also wondered at the technical progress and intensification in horticulture? We will first focus on William Robinson's new outlook on what he called the "modern garden", understood as both a place and a practice, and how he endeavoured to bring the latest discoveries and methods of post-darwinian natural sciences into the daily life of middle-class Victorians. Then we will study how the robinsonian garden and its underlying ethics both emerged from and fostered the rise of socially progressive ideas and the democratization of access to leisure. Finally, we will ponder over the notion of gardens as heritage, since they came to be perceived as natural objects and stores of beauty to be preserved, but also as agents in fostering civilisation and protection of the past.