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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 The cottage garden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, it depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure. Ho ...
style of her period.ODNB entry by Catherine Horwood
Retrieved 1 December 2012. (Pay-walled)
The garden she created, at
East Lambrook Manor East Lambrook Manor is a small 15th-century manor house in East Lambrook, Somerset, England, registered by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. It is surrounded by a "cottage garden" planted by Margery Fish between 1938 and her death ...
in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.


Background

Margery Townshend was born on 5 August 1892 at 16 Eastbank,
Stamford Hill Stamford Hill is an area in Inner London, England, about 5.5 miles north-east of Charing Cross. The neighbourhood is a sub-district of Hackney, the major component of the London Borough of Hackney, and is known for its Hasidic community, the l ...
, now part of the
London Borough of Hackney London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, as the second of the four daughters of Ernest Townshend (died 1926), a commercial traveller in tea, and his wife Florence Harriet, née Buttfield (died 1920). She was educated at the
Friends School Saffron Walden Friends' School (known as Walden School from 2016–17) was a Quaker independent school located in Saffron Walden, Essex, situated approximately 12 miles south of the city of Cambridge, England. The school was co-educational and accommodated chi ...
and at a secretarial college, before spending twenty years working in
Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
, initially with countryside magazines and then with
Associated Newspapers DMG Media (stylised in lowercase) is an intermediate holding company for Associated Newspapers, Northcliffe Media, Harmsworth Printing, Harmsworth Media and other subsidiaries of Daily Mail and General Trust. It is based at Northcliffe House in ...
. There she accompanied
Lord Northcliffe Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. As owner of the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Mirror'', he was an early developer of popular journal ...
on a war mission to the United States in 1916, and then worked as secretary to six successive editors of the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'', the last of whom, the
widower A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died. Terminology The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...
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''. A visit to Germany in 1937 convinced Walter Fish that war was inevitable and that they should move to the countryside. They eventually bought
East Lambrook Manor East Lambrook Manor is a small 15th-century manor house in East Lambrook, Somerset, England, registered by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. It is surrounded by a "cottage garden" planted by Margery Fish between 1938 and her death ...
in the
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_ ...
parish of
Kingsbury Episcopi Kingsbury Episcopi is a village and civil parish on the River Parrett in Somerset, England, situated north west of Yeovil in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 1,307. The parish includes the villages of West Lambrook, ...
in November of that year. The house, which was designated 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 ...
in 1959, 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 w ...
in the 15th and 16th centuries and came with two acres of land.


Gardening

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 Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...
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. Only after Walter's death in 1947 could Margery fully implement her ideas and develop her skills as a plantswoman. She became interested especially in unfashionable green
hellebore Commonly known as hellebores (), the Eurasian genus ''Helleborus'' consists of approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave its name to the tribe of Helleboreae. ...
s and other shade-loving spring flowers. She sought to make things grow in cracks and crevices. She soon had a group of correspondents, with whom she swapped ideas and rare plant material. These included Lawrence Johnston of
Hidcote Manor Hidcote Manor Garden is a garden in the United Kingdom, located at the village of Hidcote Bartrim, near Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. It is one of the best-known and most influential Arts and Crafts gardens in Britain, with its linked "g ...
, Gloucestershire, the garden designer
Nancy Lindsay Norah Mary Madeleine Lindsay (née Bourke) (26 April 1873 – 20 June 1948) was a socialite garden designer who between the World wars became a major influence on garden design and planting in the United Kingdom and on the Continent. Biography ...
, and the Somerset neighbour Violet Clive of
Brympton d'Evercy Brympton d'Evercy (alternatively Brympton House), a grade I listed manor house near Yeovil in the county of Somerset, England, has been called the most beautiful in England. In 1927 the British magazine '' Country Life'' devoted three articles ...
, an equally passionate gardener. By the late 1950s, East Lambrook garden was being opened to the public for charity and had a small
plant nursery A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sell to the general p ...
attached to it. In 1963, she received a silver
Veitch Memorial Medal The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize issued annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Goal The prize is awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement o ...
from the
Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nort ...
. As the garden website put it, "Margery Fish developed a style of gardening which was in tune with the times: the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
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 Sissinghurst is a small village in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. Originally called ''Milkhouse Street'' (also referred to as ''Mylkehouse''), Sissinghurst changed its name in the 1850s, possibly to avoid association with the smu ...
, 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." The garden was awarded Grade I status 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 ...
in 1992. 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 Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction m ...
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 A malt house, malt barn, or maltings, is a building where cereal grain is converted into malt by soaking it in water, allowing it to sprout and then drying it to stop further growth. The malt is used in brewing beer, whisky and in certain food ...
. The 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' is still a popular variety. Other varieties named after her garden include the 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', the cotton lavender ''
Santolina chamaecyparissus ''Santolina chamaecyparissus'' (synonym (taxonomy), syn. ''S. incana''), known as cotton lavender or lavender-cotton, is a species of flowering plant in the Family (biology), family Asteraceae, native plant, native to the western and central Medi ...
'' 'Lambrook Silver', and the 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'. She hunted out several rare old double forms and single and named coloured forms of primrose. There are varieties of ''
Pulmonaria ''Pulmonaria'' (lungwort) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae, native to Europe and western Asia, with one species (''P. mollissima'') east to central Asia. According to various estimates there may be between 10 and 18 spe ...
'', ''
Penstemon ''Penstemon'' , the beardtongues, is a large genus of roughly 250 species of flowering plants native mostly to the Nearctic, but with a few species also found in the North American portion of the Neotropics. It is the largest genus of flowering ...
'', ''
Bergenia ''Bergenia'' (elephant-eared saxifrage, elephant's ears) is a genus of ten species of flowering plants in the family Saxifragaceae, native to central Asia, from Afghanistan to China and the Himalayan region. Description They are clump-forming, ...
'', ''
Dicentra ''Dicentra'' ( Greek ''dís'' "twice", ''kéntron'' "spur"), known as bleeding-hearts, is a genus of eight species of herbaceous plants with oddly shaped flowers and finely divided leaves, native to eastern Asia and North America. Description F ...
'', ''Hebe'', ''Euphorbia characias'' and ''
Hemerocallis A daylily or day lily is a flowering plant in the genus ''Hemerocallis'' , a member of the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae. Despite the common name, it is not in fact a lily. Gardening enthusiasts and horticulturists have long ...
'' named after her. She is credited with aptly naming the variety ''
Astrantia ''Astrantia'' is a genus of herbaceous plants in the family (biology), family Apiaceae, native to Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southern Europe and the Caucasus. There are several species, which have aromatic roots, leaf s ...
major'' subsp ''involucrata'' 'Shaggy' on discovering it in her garden. Margery Fish became an avid
galanthophile A galanthophile is an enthusiastic collector and identifier of snowdrop (''Galanthus'') species and cultivars. Term The term galanthophile was probably coined by a noted British plantsman and garden writer E. A. Bowles (1865–1954), in a lette ...
or
snowdrop ''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 sm ...
enthusiast. Her book ''A Flower for Every Day'' includes an account of the giant snowdrop variety "S. Arnott", first exhibited at a Royal Horticultural Society exhibition in 1951 and acquired by her from a specialist company. There were said in 2008 still to be 60 different named varieties of ''
Galanthus nivalis ''Galanthus nivalis'', the snowdrop or common snowdrop, is the best-known and most widespread of the 20 species in its genus, ''Galanthus''. Snowdrops are among the first bulbs to bloom in spring and can form impressive carpets of white in areas ...
'' growing at East Lambrook. Several snowdrop varieties discovered in the "ditch garden" at Lambrook since Margery Fish's death have been named and described.


Writing

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),Bibliographical information from the British Library Integrated Catalogue. 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 Michael Kevin Pollan (; born February 6, 1955) is an American author and journalist, who is currently Professor of the Practice Non-Fiction and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professo ...
, 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."


Legacy

Margery Fish died in
South Petherton South Petherton is a village and civil parish in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England, located east of Ilminster and north of Crewkerne. The parish had a population of 3,367 in 2011 and includes the smaller village of Over Stra ...
Hospital, Somerset, on 24 March 1969, leaving her house and garden to a nephew,
Henry Boyd-Carpenter Sir (Marsom) Henry Boyd-Carpenter (born 11 October 1939) is a son of Francis Henry Boyd-Carpenter by his wife Nina (née Townshend). Nina Boyd-Carpenter's sister was the gardener and writer Margery Fish; Henry Boyd-Carpenter inherited his aunt's ho ...
. He and other relatives kept up the garden and extended the nursery. They were sold in 1985, but the next owners, Andrew and Dodo Norton, maintained the garden and nursery and continued to develop the legacy of Margery Fish, before handing over to the Williams family in 1999. However, according to
David St John Thomas David St John Thomas (30 August 1929 – 19 August 2014) was an English publisher and writer who founded David & Charles. Early life and career The son of writer Gilbert Thomas (1891–1978) he shared his father's enthusiasm for railways, partic ...
writing in 2004, "It was a miracle that
he garden He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
survived unscathed." Robert and Mary Anne Williams bought it after visiting the house in the dark and had no inkling of the garden's importance, with its two longstanding gardeners, or knowledge of Margaret Fish. However, Robert completed a Royal Horticultural College course, and they were soon employing 28 staff, with a tearoom, shop and art gallery. 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 Yeovil College is a tertiary college for further education and higher education based in Yeovil, Somerset. It maintains a main campus in the town and, at a second site, a Construction Skills Centre. In conjunction with the universities of Bourn ...
horticulture courses are held there.


Books

*''We Made a Garden'', 1956 *''A Flower for Every Day'', 1958 *''Cottage Garden Flowers'', 1961 *''Ground Cover Plants'', 1963 *''Gardening in the Shade'', 1964 *''An All the Year Garden'', 1966Margery Fish *''Carefree Gardening'', 1966 *''Gardening on Clay and Lime'', 1970 All the titles have been reprinted in various forms at various times. Several have been translated into German, Dutch, Italian and other languages.


External resources

*East Lambrook Manor Gardens website
Retrieved 20 December 2016.
*A tribute by garden designer Sarah Topp

*A recent US appreciation of East Lambrook and Margery Fish
Retrieved 2 November 2012.
*A well illustrated account of a visit to the garden

*The
National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...
possesses two photographs of Margery Fish
Retrieved 2 November 2012.
*A 2007 BBC radio programme on Margery Fish
Retrieved 17 November 2012.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fish, Margery 1892 births 1969 deaths English gardeners Women horticulturists and gardeners English garden writers English women non-fiction writers 20th-century English women writers 20th-century British non-fiction writers People from Stamford Hill People from Somerset