Robinson, David Willis

by Linde Lunney

Robinson, David Willis (1928–2004), scientist and horticulturalist, was born 2 April 1928 in Belfast, second son of William Robinson and his wife Eva (née Rice), who had two other sons. His father had a small building business, and in the difficult years of the 1930s also sold bedding plants.

Educated at Belfast High School (1940–46) and QUB (1946–7), he went to study horticulture at Reading University in 1947. He graduated B.Sc. (Hort) in 1949 and went to work for the Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture as a horticultural advisor in south Down (1950–53). He began to research weed control in food crops, particularly strawberries, and in 1953, when he was appointed deputy director of the newly established Horticulture Research Centre in Loughgall, Co. Armagh, he began an evaluation of the chemical weed killers then being developed. In 1954 he was awarded a Kellogg Foundation grant to study for a year at Cornell University in New York state, taking his M.Sc. in apple culture. He returned to Loughgall and received in 1961 a Ph.D. degree from QUB, for research on herbicides such as paraquat and simazine which allowed commercial growers to reduce the amount of weeding and cultivation needed for all crops, as well as holding out the promise of less work for gardeners, at a time when gardening was becoming much more popular as a leisure pursuit. His reputation and contacts in the Republic led in 1963 to his being offered the job of director of the Kinsealy Research Centre on Malahide Road in north county Dublin. He had a difficult decision to make, because his career prospects in the UK were excellent and he had been planning to avail himself in the same year of a Fulbright scholarship to California, but in 1964 he opted for the challenge of a move to the then relatively under‑funded horticultural sector in the Republic.

At Kinsealy from 1964 to 1988, Robinson and his team researched weed control in crops and gardens, and recommended regimes of herbicide application and limited soil disturbance which greatly streamlined growers' work and boosted food production. As author of more than 100 widely cited papers, and joint‑editor of three textbooks, he had an international reputation in his area of expertise, and was an invited speaker at meetings all over the world. His work was remarkably influential in commercial horticulture; he was asked to advise several developing countries (Lesotho, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Namibia and Malta), working on programmes funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He reckoned that he had worked as a horticulturalist in one way or another in no fewer than 70 countries; he was president (1971–2) of the Horticultural Education Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and represented Ireland on the council of the International Society for Horticultural Science (1964–88). Robinson's own seven‑acre garden at Earlscliff, though on somewhat difficult terrain on the Howth peninsula, became famous for its unusual tender and exotic plants, often from the southern hemisphere, which grew enthusiastically in the maritime micro‑climate. Earlscliff was both a showplace in its own right and a showcase for the weed control techniques that he advocated.

From 1988 his international scientific reputation was paralleled in his retirement years by celebrity in Ireland and elsewhere as a gardening writer and broadcaster. He wrote on gardening in a number of popular and specialist journals, including the Farmers' Journal, and was a regular panel member of the RTÉ radio programme 'Ask about gardening'. For four years in the mid 1990s, he was presenter of 'Greenfingers', a popular television programme broadcast by both RTÉ and the BBC. From 1994 he developed a second international career as lecturer on cruise ships and as tour leader of groups which visited gardens and plant habitats all over the world, and he judged frequently at gardening competitions and festivals. From 1992 to 1998, as he developed an interest in urban horticulture, he was a visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, lecturing there for about a month each year.

Robinson's significant contributions to science, as well as his achievements as an educator and practitioner, were recognised by a number of awards from leading societies and institutions. He was given honorary life membership of the RDS and of the International Society for Horticultural Science; was a fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science and was a fellow of the Institute of Horticulture, which also gave him its Distinguished Horticulturalist Award. In 1981, the Royal Horticultural Society awarded him the Veitch Memorial Award, its major award for outstanding contribution to the science and practice of horticulture.

Robinson married Muriel Sutherland on 16 December 1955. She survived him with their son and daughter, when he died 28 March 2004. His funeral service was at Howth Presbyterian Church, followed by cremation at Glasnevin.