In the 1960s, Margery Fish and her husband Walter decided to transform an acre of wilderness into a stunning cottage garden. First published in 1956, 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. Her many articles and books inspired garden enthusiasts with her easy read knowledge and observation.

But its chief pleasure lies in watching its author emerge from an exhausting, all-consuming relationship—a union in which she was expected to defer to her husband, a man who was never wrong—and become a person in her own right. A good gardening book with plenty of handy tips, plant suggestions (some albeit a bit dated) and admissions of mistakes to let you avoid the same pitfalls! A database compiled in the 1990s of every plant she mentioned in print contains 6500 items, including over 200 single snowdrop varieties. The National Portrait Gallery, London possesses two photographs of Margery Fish: Retrieved 2 November 2012. In this classic owrk, she recounts the trails and tribulations, successes and failures, of her venture with ease and humour.

The ideas she had deployed could very easily be replicated in a smaller space with just as effective results. 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. Current gardener Whitty sums up the policy on opportunists as, “If it is not in the way and it looks good, leave it. wulfenii 'Lambrook Gold', the cotton lavender Santolina chamaecyparissus 'Lambrook Silver', and the primrose Primula 'Lambrook Mauve'.

It is deliberately, aggressively vast, this lawn, and it is only grudgingly that Walter makes space at its edge for a very narrow flowerbed in which Margery is allowed to plant a few perennials so long as they don’t encroach on the grass.Margery Fish developed a style of gardening which was in tune with the times: the Second World War had made labour scarce and expensive and it was no longer a reality to have paid teams of gardeners. A visit to Germany in 1937 convinced Walter Fish that war was inevitable and that they should move to the countryside. Margery Fish turned to gardening when she was in her mid-forties and went on to develop the whole concept of a cottage garden. So when in 1917 the prime minister, Lloyd George, asked him to head the British Mission to the USA, Northcliffe immediately requested that Margery be on his staff.