Gardens Illustrated Magazine

She made a garden Designer Isabel Bannerman uncover’s Margery Fish’s collection of snowdrops at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset

Margery Fish is best known for her books on creating her garden at East Lambrook Manor but, as designer Isabel Bannerman discovers, she was also an early galanthoph­ile who filled the garden with snowdrops

When we moved back to Somerset earlier this year, not ten miles from East Lambrook Manor, a return to this legendary garden of the prolific garden writer Margery Fish was high on the to-do list. The eight books she wrote between 1956 and her death in 1969 were formative to our parents’ generation. She was the queen of the middle-sized cottage garden – ‘as modest and unpretenti­ous as the house’. Margery comes across as the epitome of modest and unpretenti­ous. Her ‘look’ is very familiar and currently very unfashiona­ble; crazy paving with alpine planting; silver and variegated shrubs along with signature blue conifers; loose herbaceous perennials. An absolute joy in later winter are the naturalise­d bulbs. The garden, and hence her writing, was about manageable ambitions: Margery gardened her own garden, and for that reason her advice is always reasonable, practical and still valid to those of us gardening away today. Our return was infused with some considerab­le nostalgia: Julian and I had originally visited when we were first together in 1983.

Margery’s real heart shines out in her winter and spring world; her green hellebores; her ferns galore; her liberal use of her strain of Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii ‘Lambrook Gold, ’which has long been a top plant of mine – silver-edges may not find favour with me but everyone likes a bit of gold. Snowdrops followed by scillas swamp the Ditch, which was her miracle invention, a rock garden without being a

Snowdrops followed by scillas swamp the Ditch, which was Margery’s miracle invention: a rock garden without being a construct

Margery liked green flowers, especially the green-marked snowdrops, and championed doubles, such as ‘Ophelia’

construct, a sunken garden that splits the space in two. She loved winterswee­t and winter-flowering Algerian irises, cyclamen, violets and the unsurpassa­ble spring luminosity of primroses. Bulbs and naturalisi­ng she really understood. Tulipa sprengeri spring everywhere – an ambition to take home and nurture.

Mike Werkmeiste­r and his wife Gail are the current owners and curators of this Grade I-listed garden.

They came, like Margery and Walter Fish, after a busy life in London. But they have never worked harder, keeping the flame burning along with Mark Stainer, their inherited head gardener, who has been at East Lambrook for more than 40 years. Mike’s idea to have a snowdrop festival for the first time last year has put considerab­le life into their February opening. Galanthoph­ilia has caught fire among this nation of gardeners. Who would have thought it? Well, Margery Fish of course. Margery liked green flowers, especially the greenmarke­d snowdrops. She championed the doubles, such as G. ‘Ophelia’, because they open even in dim light.

She loved G. ‘Magnet’ with its wiry pedicels, the pearls dancing ‘en tremblant’ like jewellery. She was not a fan of the rare and pricey yellow ones, although she kept G. nivalis f. plenifloru­s ‘Lady Elphinston­e’ in a trough on the sunny side of the Malthouse. Seedlings abound in the garden: G. ‘Dodo Norton’ is a seedling identified in the Ditch, a remarkable snowdrop: thick, short, and with an opaqueness of white akin to sun-block.

All her books are sympatheti­c, self-effacing and deeply common-sensical. Her deceptivel­y simple voice, melding gardening know-how with memoir, is most remarkably original in her first book We Made A Garden. It is a strangely veiled exorcism of her years gardening with her husband until his death just after the war. In the summer of 1937, as a response to the coming of war, the retired editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Fish, 63, persuaded his wife that they should move from London. They had been married for only

Margery built walls and made paths with her own bare hands, despite changing for dinner every night

four years. Margery was 45; she was born in Stamford Hill in 1892, and properly educated at the

Quaker Friends’ School, Saffron Waldon. Secretaria­l college lead to Fleet Street and, as well as being personal secretary to no fewer than six editors of the Daily Mail, including Walter, and its publisher

Lord Northcliff­e, Margery wrote for periodical­s such as The Field. Stalwart wall-builder and path-maker, in photograph­s Margery reminds one of Agatha Christie, jowls above the tweed collar and, from beneath the tweed skirt, those legs that taper not a jot as they descend into stout shoes.

As a journalist she knew how to write; as a novice gardener she knew what she liked. She worked at it. She built walls and made paths with her own bare hands, despite changing for dinner every night. She and Walter gardened together cantankero­usly until he died in 1947, and the merry widow developed into a plantswoma­n proper. She wrote We Made A Garden in 1956, aged 63, and began to open the garden. It was a very different world; no garden centres, no plants freely for sale everywhere as they are now. They came in the post from friends or specialist nurseries, ‘rooted slips’ wrapped only in damped newspaper. ‘One of the most delightful things about gardening is the freemasonr­y it gives with other gardeners,’ wrote Margery, a generous thought and a truth that abides. The freemasonr­y is alive and well and, it seems, her garden will be kept going, the snowdrops ever-increasing and ever more enjoyed.

USEFUL INFORMATIO­N

Address East Lambrook Manor Gardens, East Lambrook, South Petherton, Somerset TA13 5HH. Tel 01460 240328. Web eastlambro­ok.com Open February to October, see website for details. Admission £6. The second East Lambrook Festival of Snowdrops takes place throughout February, see website for details.