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Coleton Fishacre (Devon, England)

Coleton Fishacre was in my top 5 gardens on the tour. This Arts & Crafts style house and garden was the country home of  Rupert D'Oyly Carte and his wife Lady Dorothy Carte.   He was the well-known theater owner (The Savoy) and producer (Gilbert & Sullivan).  They spotted the property from their yacht and thought it would be a great spot for a country home and garden. Ah, to have that much money... They commissioned Oswald Milne, a former student of Edward Lutyens to design the house. Both Rupert and Lady Dorothy were interested in gardening but it was Lady Dorothy who mainly planted the garden, filling it with exotic and tender plants that survived with the influence of the Gulf stream. They employed six full-time gardeners! I often wonder if people who have that much money are really able to enjoy a property like this and actually live in it?  Their tenure here wasn't that long (a dozen years or so), although Dorothy lived here full-time in the late 19...
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Hillwood, the Marjorie Merriweather Post Estate

Here is another fabulous garden, also located in Georgetown, close to Dumbarton Oaks. Ms. Post apparently had enough money to feed a third world nation and the house is filled with Russian antiques and French porcelain. The gardens were immaculate and the best maintained of any gardens that I saw on my trip to Washington D.C. The majority of the plantings were azaleas which were not blooming of course. It has to be a most spectacular sight in the spring.

This is the driveway (yes, the driveway!)







Nice backyard



A pet cemetery



The French Parterre Garden - this was on the side of the house and Ms. Post had a view of it from her upstairs bedroom window.





The Rose Garden


A personal golf course!



This was one of the prettiest Japanese gardens I've ever seen. In fact, I've never really desired such a garden until I saw this one. It was very impressive, on a steep hillside, and tons of water. I kept wondering what size pump it would take to handle all that water.







Of course I loved the statuary -






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  1. chuck b.August 15, 2007 at 10:28 PM

    Wait, pet cemetery? Did you say "pet cemetery"? The garden has a pet cemetery?! Yikes!

    That Japanese garden looks very impressive. I have to go take some pictures of a secret Japanese garden in downtown San Francisco I heard about recently.

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  2. Phillip OliverAugust 16, 2007 at 9:35 AM

    Yes, there was a pet cemetery. It was a small circle with about 10-12 graves of pets.

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  3. LostRosesAugust 16, 2007 at 7:24 PM

    Wow, real tombstones for her pets. She's not buried there, too, is she?

    I have to agree with you on the Japanese garden. Now that's one worth cultivating!

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    1. AnonymousJuly 8, 2024 at 8:35 PM

      Her ashes are placed at the bottom of the obelisk type feature in the rose garden.

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  4. chuck b.August 16, 2007 at 10:21 PM

    Mark me down as thinking the pet cemetery is a *fabulous* garden feature! You just don't expect a pet cemetery! Suddenly, I think if I had a big garden (really big) , I would like to have in it somewhere a small pet cemetery--even if it was fake.

    At the San Francisco Flower and Garden show this year, an exhibitor built a small landscape of poisonous plants, subtly adorned here and there with distressed tombstones.

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