We Made a Garden

Product Information

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.

In winter, heating of sorts, came from unwilling-to-give-up-their-warmth night-storage heaters, open fires and a marvellous 1950s Rayburn solid fuel range. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. If, by an oversight, it is allowed to stay on a piece of a flower bed for more than a minute, in two minutes that flower bed will be a solid mat of stonecrop of a particularly luxuriant quality.In this beautiful and timeless work, she recounts the trails and tribulations, successes and failures, of her venture with ease and humour. Margery Fish is entertaining and amusing but in this day and age, there is no place for the constant mentioning of Walter, the absolute domineering, tyrannical gobshite of a husband that not only disallowed Margery any autonomy in the garden, but actively delighted in wrecking her plans by pulling up plants, throwing soil from his projects on her work and generally berating her for every idea mentioned! A quirky classic, this book details her creation of a landmark cottage garden, as well as her battles with her husband in the process, who preferred the standard suburban approach.

The previous owner grew her vegetables here and, for decades, she’d dug in compost and she’d dug in manure. 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. Now with a space of her own, Margery threw herself wholeheartedly into the making of a cottage garden, making up in enthusiasm and energy what she lacked in knowledge. Sometimes in the summer my heart softens when I see its really pretty flat pink rosettes, but most of the time it is war. First published in Britain in 1956 and never before available in America, We Made a Garden is the classic story of a unique and enduring English country garden.

Fresh starts, hidden rooms, difficulties that turn into assets, wicked landlords, fairy godmothers who compost.

Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.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. 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. Her many articles and books inspired garden enthusiasts with her easy read knowledge and observation. Her good sense, practical knowledge and imaginative ideas will encourage and inspire gardeners everywhere. Eventually, a bit sweaty, a bit breathless, not very Thor-like, I’d made a hole big enough to peek through.

Well, it wasn't much help as a source of practical inspiration, to be honest, but I enjoyed basking in the warmth of her love for all things green, anyway, and that was a kind of inspiration to take more care of the poor neglected patch of muck. When Margery's voice emerges on its own, questioning or ignoring Walter's pronouncements, the book is at its most endearing. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. I do dream of finding extra rooms in the various houses I lived in – have read that it’s not uncommon, but no idea what it means.

I am a novice gardener and the vast array of latin names for plants that I don't recognize was not really helpful to my objective. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.