When a garden has been open to the public for a long time, it’s easy to take it for granted. East Lambrook Manor garden in Somerset is just such a case.

After seventeen years in the capable care of Mike Werkmeister and his late wife Gail, ELM had been on the market since 2023, but with no guarantee that new owners would want to take on the labour of love involved in maintaining such an iconic garden, let alone opening it to the public and running its popular plant nursery.

Thankfully garden lovers can breathe a sigh of relief: East Lambrook Manor’s new custodians, Alison and Andrew Johnson, are committed and accomplished gardeners who regularly opened their previous garden, a 1.6 acre ‘English garden in the woods’, in Seattle, to the public.

Having moved back home from America for Andrew’s ‘semi-retirement’ in the UK, the couple were keen to find ‘a really old house with a fabulous garden’.  Discovering that East Lambrook Manor – a 600 year old English hall house with a world-famous garden attached – was on the market, their wish list was well and truly ticked.

Since moving in May, they have hit the ground running.  Andrew recounts how just three days after taking up residence the garden was open for the NGS, honouring a long-standing date in the Yellow Book calendar. The NGS relationship will continue (‘they’ve been really supportive’, notes Alison) and the RHS has just  confirmed that from next year the garden will once again have RHS Partner Garden status, making the garden even more attractive to visitors.

Early on they had a visit from Maureen Whitty, one of East Lambrook’s original gardeners and a direct link to Margery Fish, the garden’s creator.  Alison and Andrew were able to tour the garden with her, and ask her advice … ‘What would Mrs Fish do…?’ Memories of Mrs Fish are still vivid in the village, as Andrew notes. ‘So many people remember Margery as well; there are quite a few who pop in just to have a coffee and reminisce … “I remember when Dad would take the shillings on the gate and Mrs Fish would make him dinner”’.

There’s plenty to do in the gardens, which had rather stood still while the property was on the market. Empty or overgrown borders though are catnip to Alison, who is both a Master Gardener and a former president of The Northwest Perennial Alliance, a volunteer-led association for passionate plantspeople in the Pacific northwest. The Alliance maintains the famous Perennial Border at Bellevue Botanic Garden so Alison is well-versed in perennial planting – the cornerstone of Margery Fish’s ethos at ELM.

 

 

Alison’s first stop was the Green Garden.  This was a priority, she says, as it’s the one of the first parts of the garden visitors encounter and so overgrown ‘I thought it was a full shade garden!’  Tackling 6ft high vinca and all-encompassing brambles, Alison has not only let in light and practically doubled the space, she has also reinstated original paths that meander through the garden and revealed a wall that the gardening team hadn’t seen for years. Iconic ‘green’ plants such as the Rosa viridiflora that haven’t survived the darkness will be replaced, guided by the relevant chapter on the Green Garden in Fish’s Gardening on Clay and Lime, and Alison is also making judicious additions of her own, such as Eriobotyra japonica and a pair of jungly Musa.

 

Alison has also been at work in the White Garden, widening a narrow border containing snowdrops and cyclamen and adding in suitably hued perennials for a more sustained period of interest. ‘We definitely want to keep the garden as is’, she reassures, ‘but you can’t be too precious’.

Near the house, The Long Border – also overrun with vinca and overshadowed by an outsized lonicera hedge– has been overhauled, revealing, to Alison’s delight, another original Margery Fish stone path along the back of the border. ‘I love a stone path – who doesn’t love a stone path?’, she asks rhetorically; to add to her joy she also discovered another one running alongside the front of the border. Yet more tangible links to Margery Fish’s garden.

But as well as editing dead plants and plants past their best, Alison and Andrew are keen to restore, not least East Lambrook’s incredible cultivars, many of which such as  Polemonium ‘Lambrook Mauve’ have been lost in the garden over the years. ‘We will try to get the full collection back’ avers Alison, ‘and have them available for visitors to buy in the nursery’.  There are plans afoot too to restore Mrs Fish’s herb garden, another lost feature.

Having taken on all the existing garden staff and volunteers, including long-standing team members Mark Stainer (who has been at the garden 50 years) and expert propagator Ellie Hanscomb, Alison has a huge bank of knowledge of the garden on which to draw. Along with Mrs Fish’s back catalogue of books and articles, it’s wonderful resource to have at the start of their Somerset gardening journey.

Regular visitors to the garden will notice some changes already. Mrs Fish’s famous crazy paving paths look clearer and wooden signs now identify different areas of the garden, such as the Silver Garden, the Lido, and the Ditch, that fecund birthplace of so many East Lambrook snowdrop varieties.  Galanthophiles will be pleased to hear that the Johnsons are continuing the annual Snowdrop Festival, started by Mike. ELM will also be part of the Great Snowdrop Gardens of Somerset Trail, being launched later this month by the Shepton Snowdrop Festival.

In advance of this, snowdrop propagator Tom Wild has returned to the garden part time to prepare the bulbs. With a new ‘chemical free’ approach in place in the gardens Andrew and Tom have developed a new super-charged’ potting mix for the bubs, mixing triocoderma harzianum (a naturally occurring fungus inhibitor) with bio-char … ‘They’ve got really nerdy about’, laughs Alison, ‘but it’s nice to go down that more sustainable route.’

Before I leave for my tour of the garden, Alison shows me their American garden, photographed by Doreen Wynja in her book The Spirited Garden. It’s beautiful and must have been a hard garden to leave but I get the sense that Andrew and Alison’s hearts have been truly captured by their new project.

‘it’s nice to show people the book because so many people love this garden,’ explains Alison, ‘and let them know it’s okay, the garden’s in good hands’.  It certainly seems to be and I couldn’t be more delighted. I’m already looking forward to many return visits.

 

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East Lambrook Manor Garden
East Lambrook
South Petherton
Somerset
TA13 5HH