This book charmed me by the cover and hypnotized me with old-fashioned language, both British and Latin.

Fish negotiate the terrain of their garden, by turns separately and together, often with humorous collisions.

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. At the time of purchase, I didn’t know that almost opposite, hidden in the lightly wooded valley below, down a long wooded driveway lay the Priory.

We knocked out the bricked-up window and dug out clay to a further depth of twelve inches, passing it out through the window to a waiting skip. The husband is older and overbearing, but Margery comes into her own, especially after his death, and becomes a noteworthy gardener herself.

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. But in spring and summer, the house was a fine – warm – place to live and for the first time, after living in London, Bristol and Brighton, I fulfilled a life-long dream: living in the country. From the secret to cultivating the smoothest lawn to the art of lifting and replanting tulip bulbs to the landscaping possibilities of evergreens, the diverse elements of successful gardening—and delightful writing—are bound together by Mr.