Meet Martin Fish Our Special Guest Blogger
- John Plant
- May 2
- 5 min read
As promised, here is our guest blog from a well-respected horticultural expert, & horticultural judge at many shows, Martin Fish. He highlights his career as well as developing his new Lincolnshire garden with his lovely wife Jill, since moving in 2022.
Enjoy your read.
Gardening is something I’ve always done and horticulture was my chosen career path when I left school. I’ve been very fortunate to have done so many interesting things, including being a head gardener, running a nursery, organising the Harrogate Flower Shows, presenting on television and BBC radio for over 30 years, Judging at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and writing for a selection of magazines. As a 16-year-old apprentice, I never imagined any of that and I count myself very lucky to have done it.
My first couple of gardens were very small, but when we had the nursery in Nottinghamshire, we had some spare land, and when Jill decided to leave her job as a teacher to help me run the business, we also started to create a garden. It was during this time I started my radio and television work and both Jill and I started writing – me about gardening and Jill about cooking using produce from the garden. By the time we sold and moved to North Yorkshire in 2007 we had created a garden of around 4-acres.
Our North Yorkshire garden was much smaller at around 3/4 -acres. We literally started from scratch and apart from four existing trees, we planted everything. During the 15 years we lived there, the garden established well, and we used it as part of our writing and broadcasting work and opened it for group visits and the NGS.
Jill and I moved to north-west Lincolnshire in September 2022, mainly to be closer to family and young grandchildren. We bought an old cottage that stands in around one-third of an acre. The great thing is the garden wraps around the cottage and can be seen from every window. Both the cottage and garden were in need of lots of TLC. Our first job was to erect a greenhouse to over-winter plants but we didn’t start any work on the garden until spring 2023, because we needed to do some immediate work in the house. Come spring, we started on the front garden by felling a disease ash tree and clearing an area of old laurel, brambles and pampas where the new kitchen garden now stands. We’ve gone for raised beds in a square which are surrounded by mixed borders of fruit, herbs and summer flowers to give a cottage-garden feel. To screen the veg garden we’ve planted a row of 15 apples and pears that are being grown as vertical cordons, that will, after a few years create a fruiting hedge. We also made new paths and created some borders on the front garden to be able to start planting.
In our second spring we started work in the side and back garden which again involved lots of pruning and clearing of overgrown shrubs, ivy and brambles. We discovered all sorts of things including a filled-in pond, heaps of stone, brick rubble and buried York paving. I designed the back garden to have more curves to give an informal flow from one area to another. An ornamental galvanised arch links two areas and this will be planted later this spring with climbers. We’ve planted several new trees including Betula ‘Jacquemontii’, Cornus kousa, Amelanchier, Liquidambar ‘Worplesdon’ and Acer griseum, plus a yew hedge that replaced a tumbled down trellis on the side garden. I’ve also done lots of work on levelling the lawns, which were in a poor state and very bumpy making it difficult to mow. With regular mowing they now look so much better.
Where possible we like to re-use materials and all the large stone we dug up has been used to make a dry-stone retaining wall and the York paving has been laid to create a secluded seating area. We did have to buy new stone paving for a patio area, but we saved all the old bricks when we removed and internal wall in the house and these have been used to build a low wall around the new patio area.
The planting in the main borders is all permanent and hardy. A mix of perennials to give colour from spring until early autumn, plus evergreen and flowering shrubs to add height and structure to the garden all year round. And of course I’ve included some hostas in several areas of the garden. These like many other plants came as divisions from our old garden and although they have only been planted for a year, they are starting to bulk up. The borders still look a little sparse and need a couple more years to establish and fill out. My plan is to complete most of the planting by May this year to give the plants a growing season to settle in, but I suspect there will be a few changes along the way as plants are moved around. And then next year, more borders in front of the cottage.
When Jill and I aren’t working in the garden, we keep busy writing for several publications, including Garden News, Kitchen Garden and the Dalesman. We also produce weekly gardening videos and a podcast under the name of Pots & Trowels and much of the content is filmed in our garden or at flowers shows or other gardens that we visit (including a visit to Rewela Cottage in 2022).
All the videos and podcasts can be found by searching Pots & Trowels on YouTube or via https://potsandtrowels.com/
During the summer months we are out and about at flower shows. I judge at all the RHS flowers shows and we also host the Potting Shed stage at many shows and events where we give talks, demonstrations and answer gardening questions. If you are planning a visit to one of the shows, please do come along and say hello. You can find details of the shows we’ll be at with the Potting Shed stage and more about our other work on our website https://www.martinfish.com/
Best wishes and enjoy your garden.
Martin Fish.
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