These included Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire, the garden designer Nancy Lindsay, and the Somerset neighbour Violet Clive of Brympton d'Evercy, an equally passionate gardener. 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. The garden is open to the public regularly and some Royal Horticultural Society and Yeovil College horticulture courses are held there. 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.

We Made a Garden by Margery Fish | Waterstones We Made a Garden by Margery Fish | Waterstones

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. Follow the Fishes progress of building a new garden their disagreements over what should be included and where to put things really adds to the human interest. Arnott", first exhibited at a Royal Horticultural Society exhibition in 1951 and acquired by her from a specialist company. There were so many specific references to plants I wasn’t familiar with (especially native English plants and any referred to by their Latin names.

It is written in a lovely informal style discussing her successes and failures as she created her garden. 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. It's just so lighthearted reading full of good ideas based on long time gardening experience and of course witty remarks about the relationship with her husband, their disagreements and who actually got it right. I had to pull out my phone so many times to Google them to get an idea of how they looked; a visual glossary of some sort would be a nice addition. In this beautiful and timeless work, she recounts the trails and tribulations, successes and failures, of her venture with ease and humour.

We Made a Garden (Modern Library Gardening): Margery Fish We Made a Garden (Modern Library Gardening): Margery Fish

That is why it was so jolly to be able to talk to you the other evening apart from business concerns.

Only after Walter's death in 1947 could Margery fully implement her ideas and develop her skills as a plantswoman. In 1951, she wrote her first piece on gardening for The Field, and went on to publish numerous magazine articles and eight books.

We Made a Garden by Fish Margery - AbeBooks We Made a Garden by Fish Margery - AbeBooks

Every issue, The English Garden magazine features the most beautiful gardens from all across the UK and Ireland - both town and country plots, big and small. 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. Clearly none of us are ever going to achieve a Margery sized garden or house without a lottery win, but you can still dream!

As another reviewer noted, in the words of LP Hartley, "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," and perhaps it is those glimpses into the domestic life of a far off land that compelled me to keep going: a lady in her long dinner dress and satin slippers perched precariously, balanced with a watering can to water the tops of her walls where trails of greenery fall. East Lambrook Manor has changed hands several times since Margery’s death in 1969, but the spirit of her garden remains there and in countless gardens around the country.

We Made a Garden by Margery Fish: Books - AbeBooks We Made a Garden by Margery Fish: Books - AbeBooks

Even if it is a garden you know by heart there are twelve months in the year and every month means a different garden, and the discovery of things unexpected all the rest of the year. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. From the secret to cultivating the smoothest lawn to the art of lifting and replanting tulip bulbs to the landscaping possibilities of evergreens, the diverse elements of successful gardening—and delightful writing—are bound together by Mr.We Made a Garden is the story of how Margery Fish, the 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. They eventually bought East Lambrook Manor in the Somerset parish of Kingsbury Episcopi in November of that year.