Margery Fish: Country Gardening

by Timothy Clark

Margery Fish has often been called the 'Mother of Modern Gardening'. Today gardeners come from all over the world to visit her garden at East Lambrook in Somerset - to discover for themselves the glorious results of her special genius. She grew plants that pleased her and did not need too much work, and showed for the first time how it was possible to have flowers in the garden all year round.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as Timothy Clark

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a real disappointment. It mostly reads like a rewrite of Margery Fish's own books, given a slightly different spin by Clark - and one that is not very flattering to Margery. Which is odd, considering Clark's opening sentence states that "Margery Fish is one of the most important gardeners to have emerged in the British Isles since the Second World War". If he truly believes that, it's hard to understand why the rest of the book portrays Margery as the ignorant wife learning from her more experienced husband, who "having employed professional gardeners in the past...had absorbed their wisdom, and saw their follies". (Although Walter had never actually done any gardening of his own...gardening knowledge imbibed by osmosis perhaps?!)

Margery's own book 'We Made a Garden' recounts her distress when Walter deliberately destroyed her favourite plants because he felt they took up too much of her time. Clark comments approvingly that this made her remember "never to devote too much time to the things she liked best at the expense of the rest of the garden." [i.e. The things Walter thought were important] In Clark's view, destroying plants that Margery liked but Walter didn't was a sign that "Walter was a good teacher and a hard taskmaster". Clark constantly informs us that Walter "trained" or "instructed" or "allowed" Margery to do something, until it sounds more as though Walter were disciplining an unruly Labrador than speaking to his spouse.

If it were only that this book were a not-very-good rewrite of Fish's own works, I'd probably have given it three stars. But the approving attitude towards Walter's controlling and borderline abusive behaviour knocks it down to two. If you want to learn about Margery Fish's work, I suggest you read her own books.