East Lambrook Manor is a small 15th-century manor house in

East Lambrook East Lambrook is an English village situated in the civil parish of Kingsbury Episcopi, within the South Somerset district of Somerset. It is noted particularly for its manor gardens. Manor East Lambrook Manor is a small 15th-century manor hous ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England, registered by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

as a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. It is surrounded by a "cottage garden" planted by

Margery Fish 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.

between 1938 and her death in 1969. The garden is Grade I listed in the

Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England provides a listing and classification system for historic parks and gardens similar to that used for listed buildings. The register is managed by Historic England ...

House

The two-storey house, Grade II* listed in 1959, was originally an open hall-house. It was built of Somerset

hamstone Hamstone is the name given to a honey-coloured building stone from Ham Hill, Somerset, England. It is a well-cemented medium to coarse grained limestone characterised by marked bedding planes of clay inclusions and less well-cemented material ...

in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was a disused chicken farm, which had fallen into disrepair until the restoration in the 1930s.

Garden

and her husband Walter Fish bought East Lambrook Manor in 1937 for £1000. They had several terraces constructed in 1938. She described the informal planting style as "jungle gardening". She wrote several books on cottage gardens. She laid out the gardens, which hold the National Collection of Geraniums, and a collection of

snowdrops ''Galanthus'' (from Ancient Greek , (, "milk") + (, "flower")), or snowdrop, is a small genus of approximately 20 species of bulbous perennial herbaceous plants in the family Amaryllidaceae. The plants have two linear leaves and a single ...

. Several varieties of plants are named after the garden, including a silver-leafed wormwood, ''

Artemisia absinthium ''Artemisia absinthium'' (wormwood, grand wormwood, absinthe, absinthium, absinthe wormwood, mugwort, wermout, wermud, wormit, wormod) is a species of ''Artemisia'', native to temperate regions of Eurasia and North Africa, and widely naturalized ...

'' 'Lambrook Silver', a spurge, ''

Euphorbia characias ''Euphorbia characias'', the Mediterranean spurge or Albanian spurge, is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae typical of the Mediterranean vegetation. It is an upright, compact evergreen shrub growing to tall and wide. Des ...

ssp. wulfenii'', 'Lambrook Gold', and a primrose ''

Primula ''Primula'' () is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants in the family Primulaceae. They include the primrose ('' P. vulgaris''), a familiar wildflower of banks and verges. Other common species are '' P. auricula'' (auricula), '' P. veris'' (cow ...

'', 'Lambrook Mauve'. The garden has been restored since 1985 into the state it was left at the time of Fish's death in 1969. It was awarded Grade I status by

in 1992. In 2011, the gardens were opened for a horticulture course, the East Lambrook Diploma in Horticulture, which covers both theoretical and practical gardening. East Lambrook Manor gardens are open to the public for nine months of the year, usually from Tuesday to Saturday. It is entered through the Malthouse, a stone building within the gardens which also contains a gallery and a café. Behind the Malthouse is an area known as the Ditch, which originally had water flowing through it. There Fish planted moisture-loving plants, but as the water no longer flows through the Ditch, it has been replanted as a sunken garden. To the east of the house is the Silver Garden, which includes

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

plants, often with silver leaves.

External source

*The official East Lambrook Manor Gardens website
Retrieved 22 June 2018.

References

{{Authority control Houses completed in the 16th century Gardens in Somerset Grade II* listed buildings in South Somerset Tourist attractions in Somerset Grade II* listed houses in Somerset Grade I listed parks and gardens in Somerset Hamstone buildings