The Garden House (Devon, England)
The destinations are beginning to blur but looking at the tour guide booklet, I see that we are now in Plymouth. Today, we visited two gardens designed by Keith Wiley. The first is The Garden House , where Wiley worked as Head Gardener for 25 years (from 1978-2003). The 10-acre estate was purchased in the 1940s by former Eton schoolmaster Lionel Fortescue and his wife Katherine. It was formerly home to the vicars of Buckland Monachronum. The Fortescue's renovated the gardens and ran a market garden business and raised cattle. The remains of some of the original buildings in the vicarage still stand in the garden and serve as a romantic backdrop in the Walled Garden - I loved the way they had massed ferns together. Just stunning! Surrounding the walled garden and venturing out away from the house are more naturalistic plantings - Today, the head gardener is Nick Haworth, who was previously head gardener at Greenway , which we visited earlier. Keith Wiley lef...
Sounds like fun! Wish I could stop by, but it's a bit of a drive. ;-) Pretty cool that you have a "Men's Garden Club".
ReplyDeleteI'll be by; let's hope the weather cooperates. We've gotten wonderful plants in the past; last year we were able to buy butterfly weed that actually grew! [Lots of credit goes to the person who transplanted it.] It's worth a trip to Florence if you're anywhere nearby - the plants are great, everyone's willing to give out helpful information, and the prices are really good.
ReplyDeleteHope your sale went well! I agree with Lisa pretty cool that there is a Men's Garden Club. I can count on one hand the number of men in the garden club I belong to. I think most of them just bring their wife to the meeting or they are widowed and looking for another wife! Whatever works.
ReplyDeleteI think the sale was a success. I haven't heard yet how much money was made but there were a lot of people there and not many plants left.
ReplyDeleteThe Men's Garden Club is pretty active. I just recently joined. I wish there were younger guys in it - I think I'm the youngest and I'm no spring chicken. But everybody I've met is super nice.