Margery Fish

Margery Fish (née Townshend, 5 August 1892 – 24 March 1969) was an English gardener and gardening writer, who wrote 8 books. She created at East Lambrook Manor, Somerset, a garden that has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.

Quotes

• There are some roses that always flower late, not just in a freak year. I always enjoy November roses, whether it is 'Madame Abel Chatenay', that wreathes the dining-room window, or 'Zephrine Drouin', who pops up from behind the barton wall at a time when I thought all good roses had gone to sleep.
  • A Flower for Every Day. Capital Books. 2000. p. 134. ISBN 9781892123251.  (172 pages; 1st edition 1958)

• If the flower spikes are kept cut the bronze-leaved plantain makes good cover because the roots are strong and the beetroot-colored leaves quite big. The plants should be put fairly close together and soon colonise if all the spikes are not removed very quickly.
  • Ground Cover Plants (4th ed.). David & Charles. 1970. p. 52.  (144 pages; 1st edition 1963)

• Hellebores are particularly valuable for the winter and one in particular, Hellebores corsicus, (now said to be H. lividus corsicus), is a good all-the-year plant for a place in the garden that is in constant use. I noticed a very happy and very natural treatment of a bed next to the porch of a front door.
  • Carefree Gardening. David & Charles. 1966. p. 15. ISBN 9780715354001.  (150 pages)

• It is not possible to make sweeping statements about what will or will not grow in clay soil, because there are so many different types of clay. Some are much stickier and more difficult to handle than others; clay that has been made easier to handle by the addition of humus will grow most plants. I don't believe there is any soil that will not grow something.
  • Gardening on Clay and Lime. David & Charles. 1970. p. 52. ISBN 9780715348628.  (160 pages; 1st part of quote; last part of quote)

We Made a Garden (1956)

• Walter believed in manuring with a very generous hand and woe betide any little plant of mine that grew nearby, as it would surely die of suffocation under the great gallops of manure that were plastered round every rose. All the manure we could get was devoted to the roses and dahlias.
  • We Made a Garden. Modern Library gardening series. Modern Library. 2002. p. 42. ISBN 9780375759475.  (129 pages; 1st edition 1956)

• Stock Exchange holidays—the 1st of May and 1st of November—were our aim for the ceremonies of planting and lifting the dahlias.
  • p.62

• All the wood ash from my open fires is shared among the plants that particularly like potash, magnolias and irises particularly, and I give some to the raspberries, and in the winter the apple trees get their share. When I grew potatoes and tomatoes they, too, were lucky.
  • p.67

Quotes about Margery Fish

• 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 end, Margery won: Walter died in 1947, and with him the need to compromise. In 1951, she wrote her first piece on gardening for The Field, and went on to publish numerous magazine articles and eight books.
  • Jim Cable, (20 June 2015) "Gardens: the plot that packs a punch. Margery Fish was the doyenne of cottage garden style in the 1950s and 60s. Her garden in Somerset remains as a testament to her carefree style of gardening.". The Guardian.

• The gardener Margery Fish married her boss, the tyrannical editor of the Daily Mail, and they moved out of London to East Lambrook Manor where a regimented, formal garden was created. After he died she uprooted the lot and started again, to create a romanitc oasis, now designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed 'cottage garden'.
  • Georgia de Chamberet, review of Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel Cooke. bookblast.org (January 25, 2016).

• Margery Fish, who published eight gardening books in the 1950s and 1960s, was, with Sackville-West and Frances Perry, one of the leading English garden writers of her day. She began late, in her 40s, and We Made A Garden tells us how it happened.
  • James Fenton, (30 November 2002) "After you'd gone. Most gardening books teach us how to plant or prune, but some of the most enduring also tell us about the author's emotional landscape. Margery Fish's 1950s classic, We Made A Garden, gives a fascinating insight into her marriage, says James Fenton". The Guardian.

External links

• Cooke, Rachel (March 18, 2015). A Gardener’s Revenge. Margery Fish’s popular gardening book bid farewell to her dead husband’s lawn and launched her career.. slate.com. (excerpted from the 2014 book Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel Cooke, published by Harper)