Margery Fish

"There are some roses that always flower late, not just in a freak year. I always enjoy November roses, whether it is 'Madame Abel Chatenay', that wreathes the dining-room window, or , who pops up from behind the barton wall at a time when I thought all good roses had gone to sleep."

"If the flower spikes are kept cut the makes good cover because the roots are strong and the beetroot-colored leaves quite big. The plants should be put fairly close together and soon colonise if all the spikes are not removed very quickly."

"s are particularly valuable for the winter and one in particular, , is a good all-the-year plant for a place in the garden that is in constant use. I noticed a very happy and very natural treatment of a bed next to the porch of a front door."

"It is not possible to make sweeping statements about what will or will not grow in clay soil, because there are so many different types of clay. Some are much stickier and more difficult to handle than others; clay that has been made easier to handle by the addition of will grow most plants. I don't believe there is any soil that will not grow something."

"believed in manuring with a very generous hand and woe betide any little plant of mine that grew nearby, as it would surely die of suffocation under the great gallops of manure that were plastered round every rose. All the manure we could get was devoted to the roses and s."

"holidays— and 1st of November—were our aim for the ceremonies of ."

"All the from my open fires is shared among the plants that particularly like , s and es particularly, and I give some to the , and in the winter the apple trees get their share. When I grew potatoes and es they, too, were lucky."

"If ever a garden was born of creative tension, it is the one at in . When Margery Fish moved there with her husband, in 1937, she wished to fill beds with simple cottage garden plants; he desired neat lawns, straight paths and bright summer bedding. Margery went on to record their battle for control in her 1956 book, We Made A Garden; with its passive aggressive tone, it is as much about their marriage as the garden, yet it is still a horticultural classic to be read and re-read., In the end, Margery won: Walter died in 1947, and with him the need to compromise. In 1951, she wrote her first piece on gardening for , and went on to publish numerous magazine articles and eight books."

"The gardener Margery Fish married , the tyrannical editor of , and they moved out of London to where a regimented, formal garden was created. After he died she uprooted the lot and started again, to create a romanitc oasis, now designated by as a ."

"Margery Fish, who published eight gardening books in the 1950s and 1960s, was, with Sackville-West and , one of the leading English s of her day. She began late, in her 40s, and We Made A Garden tells us how it happened."