A new edition of one of the best-loved and most influential gardening books of the 20th century has been released. Written in 1956 by Margery Fish, this excerpt from We Made a Garden introduces East Lambrook Manor Gardens, one of South Somerset’s outstandingly beautiful cottage gardens, which can still be visited today
'When, in 1937, my husband decided there was a likelihood of war, and we made up our minds to buy a house in the country, all our friends thought we’d choose a respectable house in good repair complete with garden, all nicely laid out and ready to walk into. And when, instead, we chose a poor battered old house that had to be gutted to be liveable, and a wilderness instead of a garden, they were really sorry for us. They were particularly sympathetic about the garden. Redoing a house could be fun, but how would two Londoners go about the job of creating a garden from a farmyard and a rubbish heap? I have never regretted our foolhardiness.
Of course, we made mistakes, endless mistakes, but at least they were our own, just as the garden was our own. However imperfect the result there is a certain satisfaction in making a garden that is like no one else’s, and in knowing that you yourself are responsible for every stone and every flower in the place. It is pleasant to know each one of your plants intimately because you have chosen and planted every one of them. In course of time they become real friends, conjuring up pleasant associations of the people who gave them and the gardens they came from.
Walter and I had several things particularly in mind when we made the garden. The first was that it must be as modest and unpretentious as the house, a cottage garden in fact, with crooked paths and unexpected corners. Next it must be easy to run. When we bought the house we were living in London, and for the first two years we divided our time between London and Somerset, so our garden had to take care of itself for much of the time. We designed it with the idea that we’d have to look after it ourselves, and though there have been times when we had regular help they were brief and uncertain, and we knew we’d soon be back where so many people are today, depending on a little casual labour when we can get it.
Since Walter died I have had to simplify it even more, as the garden can only have the odd hours that are left over in a busy life. He made me realize that the aim of all gardeners should be a garden that is always presentable – not a 'Ruth Draperish' garden that has been, or will be, but never is at its best. We don’t apologize for our homes because we keep them garnished regularly as a matter of course, and I have never understood why we don’t feel exactly the same about a garden.
Another thing he taught me was that you mustn’t rely on your flowers to make your garden attractive. A good bone structure must come first, with an intelligent use of evergreen plants so that the garden is always clothed, no matter what time of year. Flowers are an added delight, but a good garden is the garden you enjoy looking at even in the depths of winter. There ought never to be a moment when it is not pleasant and interesting. To achieve this means a lot of thought and a lot of work, but it can be done.
Walter had one garden adage he was always quoting at me: ‘It is nice to take a walk in the garden and better still if you take a hoe with you.’ I think a pair of secateurs would be my choice. How often one sees odd bits of dead wood, suckers and overhanging branches as well as deadheads on one’s morning amble. That timely snip saves a lot of time and trouble, and one can collect a few flowers for the house at the same time. Deadheading is a most important part of gardening. It isn’t only from the point of tidiness that one should remove spent flowers. A plant will go on flowering over much longer periods if every dead bloom is removed at once. Kept in a state of frustrated motherhood it will go on producing flowers in the hope of being allowed to set seed and thus reproduce itself. I often get three flowerings on Canterbury Bells by persistent deadheading, and I even deadhead my naturalised daffodils so that they do not deteriorate. I have some old swords and I keep one sharpened for this job. One can slash off a lot of heads in a very short time. My friends are not so keen on this habit of mine, it deprives them of all the exciting seeds they would like. The only plants I allow to come to maturity are those which I want to increase, such as primulas and cyclamen, willow gentian, blue poppies and incarvillea. Walter was never tired of telling me about a certain great garden, whose noble owner boasted that no dead flower would ever be found therein – a wonderful standard which we’d all like to copy. I often wondered how many gardeners were employed in that garden, and if there were many beds of violas in it.
We used to have great arguments about this deadheading job. Walter used to go round with a pair of secateurs in his hand and snip off his dead roses, but he never picked them up. I complained that I wasn’t the fifth gardener and it wasn’t my job to go round clearing up after him. But I always did because I couldn’t bear to see the beds littered with dead flowers. In the end it became a family joke and he took great delight in telling me when various parts of the garden needed the attentions of the fifth gardener. He pruned roses in the same way and, when I protested, always explained that the important thing was to get the pruning done and the little matter of collecting the prunings could be done at any time – but never by him!'
