We Made a Garden

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Clearly none of us are ever going to achieve a Margery sized garden or house without a lottery win, but you can still dream! Fish, i often found myself running out to the garden right after reading something smart to put in practice. But, as her health deteriorated, tending a big kitchen garden became too much for her and the plot slipped into neglect.

Almost twenty years later, in 1956, Walter’s wife looked back and chronicled what they did with their two acre plot in the classic gardening book We Made a Garden by Margery Fish. As another reviewer noted, in the words of LP Hartley, "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," and perhaps it is those glimpses into the domestic life of a far off land that compelled me to keep going: a lady in her long dinner dress and satin slippers perched precariously, balanced with a watering can to water the tops of her walls where trails of greenery fall.Even if it is a garden you know by heart there are twelve months in the year and every month means a different garden, and the discovery of things unexpected all the rest of the year.

getting lost) On a chilly-sunny March morning, we pulled into the small carpark at Overton Hill and the start of The Ridgeway. Gardening books are always wonderful and, as ever, I came away with notes of new plants to try and new techniques. I am a novice gardener and the vast array of latin names for plants that I don't recognize was not really helpful to my objective. Used books have different signs of use and might not include supplemental materials such as CDs, Dvds, Access Codes, charts or any other extra material. Fresh starts, hidden rooms, difficulties that turn into assets, wicked landlords, fairy godmothers who compost.It made me incredibly sad that her husband’s strong opinions on gardening clashed so much with her own. Now with a space of her own, Margery threw herself wholeheartedly into the making of a cottage garden, making up in enthusiasm and energy what she lacked in knowledge.

There were so many specific references to plants I wasn’t familiar with (especially native English plants and any referred to by their Latin names.Very enjoyable read of an English couple creating a garden in a forsaken plot of land, in 1940s England. Well, it wasn't much help as a source of practical inspiration, to be honest, but I enjoyed basking in the warmth of her love for all things green, anyway, and that was a kind of inspiration to take more care of the poor neglected patch of muck. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins.