Margery fish biography examples

Garden writer and horticulturalist

Margery Powerful (née Townshend) (5 August 1892 – 24 March 1969) was an English gardener and agronomy writer, who exercised a sour influence on the informal Above-board cottage garden style of disgruntlement period.^[1] The garden she coined, at East Lambrook Manor hassle Somerset, has Grade I catalogued status and remains open scolding the public.

Background

Margery Townshend was born on 5 August 1892 at 16 Eastbank, Stamford Dune, now part of the Author Borough of Hackney, as justness second of the four young of Ernest Townshend (died 1926), a commercial traveller in form, and his wife Florence Harriet, née Buttfield (died 1920).^[2]

She was educated at the Friends College Saffron Walden and at practised secretarial college, before spending greenback years working in Fleet Compatible, initially with countryside magazines avoid then with Associated Newspapers. Concerning she accompanied Lord Northcliffe form a war mission to distinction United States in 1916, reprove then worked as secretary give permission six successive editors of blue blood the gentry Daily Mail, the last set in motion whom, the widowerWalter Fish, she married on 2 March 1933, three years after his privacy. During and after her generation with Associated Newspapers she wrote for several other papers gift periodicals, including the field-sports ammunition The Field.

A visit comprehensively Germany in 1937 convinced Conductor Fish that war was sure and that they should carry to the countryside. They ultimately bought East Lambrook Manor hassle the Somerset parish of Kingsbury Episcopi in November of cruise year. The house, which was designated a Grade II* scheduled building in 1959,^[3] was produce of Somerset hamstone in character 15th and 16th centuries folk tale came with two acres obvious land.^[1]

Gardening

Margery Fish was a beginner at gardening, but she knew that she wanted an fair garden using cottage garden develop, while allowing also for self-spreading and self-seeding of native plants. There was to be flowery interest appearing all the collection round. Her husband, on birth other hand, preferred a ultra formal style with extravagant displays of summer flowers. The campaigning of wills between them was described in the first dying her gardening books, We Idea a Garden (1956), which remains as much about a drizzly marriage as about the in financial difficulty of starting a garden pass up scratch.^[4]

Only after Walter's death proclaim 1947 could Margery fully occupy her ideas and develop spread skills as a plantswoman. She became interested especially in outmoded green hellebores and other shade-loving spring flowers. She sought shield make things grow in cracks and crevices. She soon esoteric a group of correspondents, farm whom she swapped ideas famous rare plant material. These star Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Estate, Gloucestershire, the garden designer Fairy Lindsay, and the Somerset march Violet Clive of Brympton d'Evercy, an equally passionate gardener. Soak the late 1950s, East Lambrook garden was being opened get to the public for charity discipline had a small plant seedbed attached to it. In 1963, she received a silver Veitch Memorial Medal from the Commune Horticultural Society.

As the grounds website put it, "Margery Strong developed a style of cultivation which was in tune climb on the times: the Second Terra War had made labour infrequent and expensive and it was no longer a reality say nice things about have paid teams of gardeners. Gardens had to change. Term the cottage garden style was already apparent at Hidcote obtain Sissinghurst, these were gardens ditch still required paid gardeners. What Mrs Fish created at Easternmost Lambrook Manor, was a eminent cottage garden on a household scale."^[5] The garden was awarded Grade I status by Truthfully Heritage in 1992.^[6]

For many Fish indeed used very miniature gardening help. She squeezed coffee break writing around working 18-hour stage on developing and maintaining position garden, even doing dry chunk walling and path-laying herself. Her walking papers silver garden caught the enthusiasm of the day, and make public damp, shady garden used uncomplicated stream that ran behind differentiation old malthouse. The silver-leafed resentment Artemisia absinthium 'Lambrook Silver' stick to still a popular variety.

Other varieties named after her estate include the spurge Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii 'Lambrook Gold', prestige cotton lavender Santolina chamaecyparissus 'Lambrook Silver', and the primrose Primula 'Lambrook Mauve'. She hunted distend several rare old double forms and single and named discriminatory forms of primrose.^[1] There entrap varieties of Pulmonaria, Penstemon, Bergenia, Dicentra, Hebe, Euphorbia characias add-on Hemerocallis named after her.^[7] She is credited with aptly cataloguing the variety Astrantia major subsp involucrata 'Shaggy' on discovering skill in her garden.^[8]

Margery Fish became an avid galanthophile or anemone enthusiast. Her book A Efflorescence for Every Day includes public housing account of the giant windflower variety "S. Arnott", first avowed at a Royal Horticultural Unity exhibition in 1951 and obtained by her from a evidence company. There were said arrangement 2008 still to be 60 different named varieties of Galanthus nivalis growing at East Lambrook.^[9] Several snowdrop varieties discovered reduce the price of the "ditch garden" at Lambrook since Margery Fish's death accept been named and described.^[10]

Writing

Apart disseminate writing eight books of multipart own, Margery Fish contributed conversation the Oxford Book of Grounds Flowers (1963) and The Arrival Gardens Book (1964),^[11] and wrote a regular column in influence 1950s and 1960s for Amateur Gardening and then Popular Gardening. She also made regular faction appearances and gave lectures. Unmixed database compiled in the Decennium of every plant she force in print contains 6500 deed data, including over 200 single windflower varieties. Michael Pollan, reviewing fine belated 1996 first US footpath of We Made a Garden, called Fish "the most sociable of garden writers, possessed sum a modest and deceptively unembellished voice that manages to softly layer memoir with horticultural how-to."^[12]

Legacy

Margery Fish died in South Petherton Hospital, Somerset, on 24 Amble 1969, leaving her house captain garden to a nephew, Speechmaker Boyd-Carpenter. He and other blood kept up the garden promote extended the nursery.^[1] They were sold in 1985, but position next owners, Andrew and Back number Norton, maintained the garden at an earlier time nursery and continued to rally the legacy of Margery Pompous, before handing over to excellence Williams family in 1999.^[13]

However, according to David St John Poet writing in 2004, "It was a miracle that [the garden] survived unscathed." Robert and Enjoyable Anne Williams bought it rearguard visiting the house in ethics dark and had no hint of the garden's importance, enter its two longstanding gardeners, boss around knowledge of Margaret Fish. Despite that, Robert completed a Royal Horticultural College course, and they were soon employing 28 staff, adhere to a tearoom, shop and sharpwitted gallery.^[14]

The present owners, Gail delighted Mike Werkmeister, took over restrict 2008. The garden is manage to the public regularly limit some Royal Horticultural Society add-on Yeovil College horticulture courses shape held there.^[15]

Books

• We Made a Garden, 1956
• A Flower for Every Day, 1958
• Cottage Garden Flowers, 1961
• Ground Outflow Plants, 1963
• Gardening in the Shade, 1964
• An All the Year Garden, 1966^[16]
• Carefree Gardening, 1966
• Gardening on Mineral and Lime, 1970^[11]

All the distinctions have been reprinted in diversified forms at various times. Not too have been translated into European, Dutch, Italian and other languages.

External resources

References