We Made a Garden

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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. David St John Thomas: Journey through Britain... (London: Frances Lincoln, 2004), pp. 343–44. Retrieved 2 November 2012. 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]

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.) 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. 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 Lambrook 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. 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.This is a charming little book by Margery Fish, offering anecdotal history of the choosing and planting of a home garden in England. According the the introduction, Fish passed decades ago but her garden has recently been restored. He credits her with how we grow our gardens. I think he must be right. 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] The Lido and Ditch Gardens are damp areas that, along with the Wooded Helleborus Garden, contain most of the garden’s extensive collection of snowdrops. The garden also has collections of hellebores, mainly Helleborus x hybridus, and geraniums. A special raised display bed allows named snowdrops in February and geraniums in summer to be seen at close quarters.

Margery Fish became an avid galanthophile or snowdrop enthusiast. Her book A Flower for Every Day includes an account of the giant snowdrop variety "S. Arnott", first exhibited at a Royal Horticultural Society exhibition in 1951 and acquired by her from a specialist company. There were said in 2008 still to be 60 different named varieties of Galanthus nivalis growing at East Lambrook. [9] Several snowdrop varieties discovered in the "ditch garden" at Lambrook since Margery Fish's death have been named and described. [10] Writing [ edit ] This was the direction in which Margery Fish was moving, and from this and her other writings it is clear that she thought of all these plants she acquired, propagated, and distributed to visitors and friends as her "babies". But in this book it is also clear that Walter has sensed this baby symbolism, and that he resents it: 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] 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 ]

Margery Fish came to gardening in her mid-forties after a career as a secretary to Lord Northcliffe, founder of the Daily Mail. She married Walter Fish, editor of the paper, in 1933 and in 1937 they bought East Lambrook Manor, then a dilapidated medieval hall house and derelict farm. She had never gardened before but it soon became her passion. East Lambrook became famous through her articles for magazines such as Amateur Gardening and through her many books about the garden. Her first, We Made a Garden, published in 1956, has encouraged generations of budding gardeners. 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 ] Yes, they were part of a campaign, and the purpose of the campaign was not to teach her to garden properly (which was not in his gift), but to prevent her from doing so and thereby leaving him behind