Peggy Cole

Peggy Cole MBE

My aim with this book is to follow up the story of my rural upbringing, my married-life `on the land' and my subsequent adventures which I told in A Country Girl At Heart, with a complimentary practical guide to traditional, country-style gardening. What follows is not a comprehensive textbook on the subject, (many excellent examples exist already) but a fairly informal guide, based upon my own experience in developing and maintaining my widely known `patch' in the heart of the Suffolk countryside.

Readers of the earlier book - and many of my summer visitors - will know how I started the garden with my late husband, Ernie, in 1970 and how, as a result of our becoming involved in the film of Ronald Blythe's wonderful book, Akenfield, we caught the attention of the media and a wide public. Nowadays my dear brother, Ronnie, helps me with much of the practical work round the year, but I still do the planting and coaxing and training of all the plants, along with many other activities which have all grown out of this beloved plot of Suffolk soil.
A Country Girl At Heart was mainly concerned with my family life in typical Suffolk villages over the past fifty years, but it also included sections on the garden, the film, the honour and excitement of the private visit by HRH Princess Margaret to my garden in 1984 and that most popular event in the country calendar- the Summer Show. There were also recipes for cakes, puddings, wines and jams among other delicious temptations-and tips for winning those coveted show prizes.
Living close to the soil and the seasons - natural blessings which so many other people today can only enjoy occasionally and city dwellers hardly at all - I feel specially glad to be able to share the joys of my garden with my visitors, my radio audiences and now, once again, my readers.
Country life today changes in step with the rapid changes in urban living, but happily those of us with our own gardens, whether small or large, have a relationship with nature that is, basically, unchanging; our gardens are still there to be loved and tended in the age-old ways of our forebears, oases of peace and harmony in a world of widespread discord and strife.
Country lore is a continuing process, like any other, and all the ideas and practices in this book stem from methods handed down to me by my grandfather, my father and my late husband, modified of course by the continual up-dating of theory, techniques and products, which I study and try out in the course of my year-to-year work in the garden.

Books by Peggy Cole include

Country Girl at Heart
Peggy Cole’s Country Cottage Companion
Peggy Cole’s Countryside Year
Peggy’s Scrape books
      Suffolk Words and Says
      Monthly Weather Sayings
      Gardening Hints
      Cooking Hints and Tips
Diary of a Countrywoman
Taste of the Country Seasons
Charsfield and Surrounding District in Pictures
From Akenfield to pastures new

New Book coming Soon!