We Made a Garden

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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 ] 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.

She was educated at the Friends School Saffron Walden and at a secretarial college, before spending twenty years working in Fleet Street, initially with countryside magazines and then with Associated Newspapers. There she accompanied Lord Northcliffe on a war mission to the United States in 1916, and then worked as secretary to six successive editors of the Daily Mail, the last of whom, the widower Walter Fish, she married on 2 March 1933, three years after his retirement. During and after her period with Associated Newspapers she wrote for several other papers and periodicals, including the field-sports magazine The Field. 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.) 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.David St John Thomas: Journey through Britain... (London: Frances Lincoln, 2004), pp. 343–44. Retrieved 2 November 2012. 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. All the titles have been reprinted in various forms at various times. Several have been translated into German, Dutch, Italian and other languages. The cottage garden created by the renowned 20th-century plantswoman and gardening writer Margery Fish.

In 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.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. The National Portrait Gallery, London possesses two photographs of Margery Fish: Retrieved 2 November 2012. In the development of gardening in the second half of the twentieth century no garden has yet had greater effect.” John Sales, National Trust Margery Fish developed a style of gardening which was in tune with the times: the Second World War had made labour scarce and expensive and it was no longer a reality to have paid teams of gardeners. Gardens had to change. While the cottage garden style was already apparent at Hidcote and Sissinghurst, these were gardens that still required paid gardeners. What Mrs Fish created at East Lambrook Manor, was a grand cottage garden on a domestic scale, she wrote, “It is pleasant to know each one of your plants intimately because you have chosen and planted every one of them.” For the first time a garden had been created to which anyone could relate. It was an ‘approachable’ garden and through her many books and articles, Margery managed to change gardening from a pastime of the wealthy to a passion for the whole population. 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.

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. 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.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 ] 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] 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. 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. With the exception of February the garden is closed on all Sundays and Mondays including Bank Holiday Mondays.)