We Made a Garden

Product Information

Margery Fish turned to gardening when she was in her mid-forties and went on to develop the whole concept of a cottage garden. She had a love of flowers coupled with a passion for nature and made an intensive research into the traditionally grown plants with which cottage gardens in Britain were once so densely planted. East Lambrook Manor Gardens is the iconic and quintessentially English cottage garden created by the celebrated 20th-century plantswoman and gardening writer Margery Fish. It was here that she developed her own style of gardening, combining old-fashioned and contemporary plants in a relaxed and informal manner to create a garden of immense beauty and charm. In 1937, with the threat of war looming, the Fish’s decided to find a house in the country away from the dangers of central London. They finally settled on the 15th century manor house in the quiet, rural Somerset village of East Lambrook. And so, having never shown the slightest interest in gardening and with no prior knowledge, Margery embarked on her second career, finally becoming one of the most important influences on gardening in the 20th century. This classic work on creating a garden was first published in 1956. We Made a Garden is the story of how Margery Fish, a leading gardener of the 1960s, and her husband Walter transformed an acre of wilderness into a stunning cottage garden, still open to the public at East Lambrook Manor, Somerset, England. A quirky classic, this book details her creation of a landmark cottage garden, as well as her battles with her husband in the process, who preferred the standard suburban approach.

It is a style that goes well with plantsmanship, a word which to detractors means only a kind of one-upmanship and obscurantism (indeed a kind of snobbery, the besetting sin of the gardener), but which in its positive sense connotes a delight in diversity and a desire to explore genus and species to the fullest. Rarity and curiousness are more at a premium in the plants-woman's garden than showiness. Colours are "subtle". A premium is put on handsome foliage, and it is not enough (at the most rarefied heights of plantsmanship) to have an example of an interesting species - one should have a particularly fine form of that species, preferably one either collected from the wild or acquired from a celebrated plant-hunter or gardener. The cottage garden created by the renowned 20th-century plantswoman and gardening writer Margery Fish. Margery Fish died in South Petherton Hospital, Somerset, on 24 March 1969, leaving her house and garden to a nephew, Henry Boyd-Carpenter. He and other relatives kept up the garden and extended the nursery. [1] They were sold in 1985, but the next owners, Andrew and Dodo Norton, maintained the garden and nursery and continued to develop the legacy of Margery Fish, before handing over to the Williams family in 1999. [13] Larger than any rose, it has something of the cabbage rose's voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it sheds its vast petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall, making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had still appeared to be a living beauty. In this beautiful and timeless work, she recounts the trails and tribulations, successes and failures, of her venture with ease and humour. Topics covered are colourful and diverse, ranging from the most suitable hyssop for the terraced garden through composting, hedges, making paths to the best time to lift and replant tulip bulbs. Her good sense, practical knowledge and imaginative ideas will encourage and inspire gardeners everywhere.Probably through Northcliffe’s influence, Margery went on to work for the News Editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Fish. He finally became Editor in 1922 and although known as a tyrant, it was his combination of decisiveness and unrestrained zest for life that made him an inspiration to work for. For seven years they worked together in a purely professional manner, but in the Spring of 1930 Margery received a much more personal letter from Walter. Another of his [previous] gardeners had my sympathy, and I think there was a moral for me in the tale of his undoing. This man had one joy in life and that was to grow wonderful chrysanthemums in pots to bring into the house in the winter. According to Walter he used to stroke and fondle his chrysanthemums so much that he was neglecting the rest of the garden. Remonstrances had no effect so one day Walter took a knife and slashed off all those pampered darlings at ground level. It was by remembering this episode that I learnt to have a sense of proportion and fairness in my gardening, and not to devote too much time to things I like best at the expense of the rest of the garden. Other varieties named after her garden include the spurge Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii 'Lambrook Gold', the cotton lavender Santolina chamaecyparissus 'Lambrook Silver', and the primrose Primula 'Lambrook Mauve'. She hunted out several rare old double forms and single and named coloured forms of primrose. [1] There are varieties of Pulmonaria, Penstemon, Bergenia, Dicentra, Hebe, Euphorbia characias and Hemerocallis named after her. [7] She is credited with aptly naming the variety Astrantia major subsp involucrata 'Shaggy' on discovering it in her garden. [8] Margery Fish was a novice at gardening, but she knew that she wanted an informal garden using cottage garden flowers, while allowing also for self-spreading and self-seeding of native plants. There was to be floral interest appearing all the year round. Her husband, on the other hand, preferred a more formal style with extravagant displays of summer flowers. The battle of wills between them was described in the first of her gardening books, We Made a Garden (1956), which is as much about a difficult marriage as about the difficulties of starting a garden from scratch. [4] Apart from writing eight books of her own, Margery Fish contributed to the Oxford Book of Garden Flowers (1963) and The Shell Gardens Book (1964), [11] and wrote a regular column in the 1950s and 1960s for Amateur Gardening and then Popular Gardening. She also made regular broadcasting appearances and gave lectures. A database compiled in the 1990s of every plant she mentioned in print contains 6500 items, including over 200 single snowdrop varieties. Michael Pollan, reviewing a belated 1996 first US edition of We Made a Garden, called Fish "the most congenial of garden writers, possessed of a modest and deceptively simple voice that manages to delicately layer memoir with horticultural how-to." [12] Legacy [ edit ]

Margery Fish (née Townshend) (5 August 1892 – 24 March 1969) was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal English cottage garden style of her period. [1] The garden she created, at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public. This landmark work on creating a garden was first published in 1956 and has rarely been out of print since. We Made a Garden is the story of how Margery Fish, the leading British gardener of the mid-twentieth century, and her husband, Walter, transformed an acre of wilderness into a stunning cottage garden, still open to the public at East Lambrook Manor, Somerset, England. Quirky and readable, this book details her creation of a world-renowned cottage garden, as well as her battles with Walter in the process, who preferred the standard suburban approach. A visit to Germany in 1937 convinced Walter Fish that war was inevitable and that they should move to the countryside. They eventually bought East Lambrook Manor in the Somerset parish of Kingsbury Episcopi in November of that year. The house, which was designated a Grade II* listed building in 1959, [3] was built of Somerset hamstone in the 15th and 16th centuries and came with two acres of land. [1] Gardening [ edit ]Having got our house we then had to give it up again so that it could be made habitable. For many months it was in the hands of the builders and all we could do was to pay hurried visits to see how things were going, and turn our eyes from the derelict waste that was to be the garden. Sometimes I escaped from the consultations for brief moments and frenziedly pulled up groundsel for as long as I was allowed. Walter never wanted to stay a moment longer than business required and it worried me to go off and leave tracts of outsize groundsel going to seed with prodigal abandon. My few snatched efforts made very little impression on the wilderness, but they made me feel better. J'ai reconnu bien des conseils donnés oralement par une vieille amie d'origine anglaise, ainsi que de nombreuses plantes que Nicole avait dans son jardin, comme les Geranium vivaces, que j'ai encore chez moi, mis en couvre-sol sur la plupart des parterres. The present owners, Gail and Mike Werkmeister, took over in 2008. The garden is open to the public regularly and some Royal Horticultural Society and Yeovil College horticulture courses are held there. [15] Books [ edit ] You can't make a garden in a hurry, particularly one belonging to an old house. House and garden must look as if they had grown up together and the only way to do this is to live in the house, get the feel of it, and then by degrees the idea of the garden will grow.

However, according to David St John Thomas writing in 2004, "It was a miracle that [the garden] survived unscathed." Robert and Mary Anne Williams bought it after visiting the house in the dark and had no inkling of the garden's importance, with its two longstanding gardeners, or knowledge of Margaret Fish. However, Robert completed a Royal Horticultural College course, and they were soon employing 28 staff, with a tearoom, shop and art gallery. [14] In the development of gardening in the second half of the twentieth century no garden has yet had greater effect.” John Sales, National Trust We were still hunting in November when our way took us very near the old house so summarily dismissed in September, so we turned down the lane which said "East Lambrook one mile," just to see what had been happening during those three months.The late Margery Fish, well-known English garden writer, recounts the joys and trials of creating, with her husband, the now-famous cottage gardens at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset. First published in 1956 by W.H. & L. Collingridge, Ltd. This edition is edited and contains a foreword by Graham Stuart Thomas. Twenty-four lovely b&w photos. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Although we have seen each other for years, it is strange how little time we have ever had to talk. That is why it was so jolly to be able to talk to you the other evening apart from business concerns.’ Two years later, on the 2nd March 1933, they were married. Margery Fish working at her desk at East Lambrook Manor (picture right).She wrote many articles and books, including the timeless classic, ‘We Made A Garden’, which charts the trials and tribulations of her early years in gardening with Walter Fish at East Lambrook Manor. One thing I never discovered and that was whether he was deliberately trying to teach me to leave experimental gardening alone until I had learnt to grow the ordinary things properly. I assumed that these regrettable incidents were not intentional, but they may have been part of a campaign.