We Made a Garden

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That's what this book is all about. Learning and sharing experiences. That's how all gardeners should be and it resumes a lot about the joy of gardening. In the development of gardening in the second half of the twentieth century no garden has yet had greater effect.” John Sales, National Trust 1980. My yard used to be given over to our Afghan Hounds, but as our children grew we let the dogs go. That is, we did not show or lure course, breed or buy more dogs. They gradually aged and died, and there was my grandmother's yard waiting for some attention. We had only one dog when the men took out the gravel and brought in topsoil. I planted blue and violet and white flowers, evergreen shrubs, and sages. I allowed the orange montbrecia and carmine escalonia that do so well on the coast, but also a richly scented old white rugosa rose, rosemary, and blue ceanothus. I have hydrangeas grown from cuttings (and quite purple in our acid soil). I have tried flowering annuals with uneven success. The battle with horsetails will never end, the butterfly bush mostly feeds bugs, the escalonia requires a firm hand to prevent it taking over the world. Barnsley, with its lively pink flowers gave us several gorgeous years of flowers from spring through November, but finally gave up. I have the firebrand "Lucifer" variety of montbrecia in addition to the more common pure orange. The hostas are determined and often send up their pretty spikes of blooms. My grandmother's purple primroses are long gone and I cannot seem to get replacements to settle, but there is always salal, a native bush much-loved by florists for its leathery leaves, and loved by my family for the berries I use like blueberries in muffins. All the titles have been reprinted in various forms at various times. Several have been translated into German, Dutch, Italian and other languages. For many years Fish indeed used very little gardening help. She squeezed her writing around working 18-hour days on developing and maintaining the garden, even doing dry stone walling and path-laying herself. Her silver garden caught the heat of the day, and her damp, shady garden used a stream that ran behind an old malthouse. The silver-leafed wormwood Artemisia absinthium 'Lambrook Silver' is still a popular variety.

So Walter taught me a lesson.... He put into action all the exasperation he felt at a pigheaded woman who just would not learn." In this way, Margery Fish describes how her husband corrected her method of staking plants by mutilating her flowers, tying ropes around their stems so tightly "that they looked throttled" (31). With the flowers (which her husband considered the least important part of the garden) dead, perhaps Margery would pay more attention to keeping the paths neat. 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. If ever a garden was born of creative tension, it is the one at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset. When Margery Fish moved there with her husband, Walter in 1937, she wished to fill beds with simple cottage garden plants; he desired neat lawns, straight paths and bright summer bedding. Margery went on to record their battle for control in her 1956 book, We Made A Garden; with its passive aggressive tone, it is as much about their marriage as the garden, yet it is still a horticultural classic to be read and re-read.In the 1960s, Margery and her husband Walter, decided to transform an acre of wilderness into a stunning cottage garden. 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 ] Fish [née Townshend], Margery (1892–1969), gardener and author". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/48830. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

This was an interesting that I didn’t necessarily love or hate. Part memoir, part textbook, part gardening resource, a little antiquated. I appreciated Fish’s anecdotes and wished there were more peppered throughout. Like Fish, I wanted a garden that was pretty in every season, that bloomed throughout the year. I also want at least some of the plants to be useful in my kitchen. Chives are thriving and so pretty I hate to cut them. 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 ] Walter may have been seen off long ago, but one can’t help but feel Margery’s presence. Owner Mike receives the odd barbed comment from Fish fans who have spied a modern plant introduction, and he can be forgiven for occasionally railing against the mistress of cottage gardening. How many of us would choose to garden with our predecessor looking over our shoulder? But as Whitty points out, “Mrs Fish was always bringing in new plants. I’d find the donor’s name on it, Enid or George or whatever.” So why shouldn’t he? Six of the best cottage plants at East LambrookIn 1956 Margery was 64 years old. She had begun her first job before women had the vote. (She had been the secretary to the editor at the Country Gentleman’s Publishing Company before joining the Daily Mail, where she would become Walter’s assistant.) Only now, in late middle age, was she approaching fulfilment. In the weeks after We Made a Garden appeared in Britain’s bookshops, something remarkable happened: a future suddenly opened out before her—and to her astonishment and clear delight, it was more expansive even than her husband’s precious lawn.

A good gardening book with plenty of handy tips, plant suggestions (some albeit a bit dated) and admissions of mistakes to let you avoid the same pitfalls! Clearly none of us are ever going to achieve a Margery sized garden or house without a lottery win, but you can still dream!!Margery Townsend left secretarial college in 1911 with glowing references, at a time when it was still rare for a middle class girl to either want or have the opportunity to follow a career, Margery entered the world of Fleet Street. She immediately showed great talent and worked diligently and zealously in everything she did and was soon promoted to work for the Editor of the Daily Mail, Tommy Marlowe. Here, for the first time she also found herself working for the newspaper’s founder, Lord Northcliffe, known to his staff as ‘The Chief’. He was a dictator who ruled his staff through fear and friendliness, able to reward one minute and punish the next. However, Margery remained loyal to his memory and indeed, he instilled in her the importance of aiming for the highest standards at whatever she embarked upon. In a world where women had still not been given the vote, Lord Northcliffe, showed Margery that regardless of their sex, it was the ability of his staff to work hard and show talent that would lead to their success. I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy in Liverpool. I have been there for nearly a week and had I known you were there, I would have seen you. It is difficult to find appointments just now, but yours is an exceptional case. You crossed the Atlantic when the submarines were at their worst and I have always given special treatment to those of my staff who took the risk. I will do my utmost. Meanwhile please come and see me tomorrow, Tuesday morning at 11.30 at No 1 Carlton Gardens. Then there was the garden itself. Increasingly in demand as a lecturer and with so much writing to do, Margery finally took on some proper help. Slowly, her team grew, and the garden, in its pomp, was opened to visitors one afternoon a week (the money went to the Red Cross). Coach parties would book themselves in and—so long as they weren’t late—Margery would go to the gate to meet them, offering herself up as tour guide. It made me incredibly sad that her husband’s strong opinions on gardening clashed so much with her own. Honestly, he sounded like a bit of an asshole - cutting down so many of her flowers as they were just starting to bloom, smothering her smaller, beloved plants with manure as he tended to his own favorites, only allowing her to participate in menial gardening tasks. She didn’t seem to truly flourish as a gardener in her own right until he passed away.