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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...

Seeing Yellow

Yellow seems to be the dominant color of early spring. Daffodils, carolina jessamine, witch hazel, Lady Banks rose, forsythia - it seems the list is endless. Here are two yellows that I photographed yesterday. My Lady Banks rose has just started and I will be posting a photo of it later.

Kerria Japonica (also known as Easter Rose) blooms before the leaves appear. It is a graceful and dependable shrub.




Carolina Jessamine is a fast-growing vine that can be used in a variety of ways. I have mine growing on a low picket fence next to my tiny vegetable garden.

Comments

  1. Phillip,
    Wow! Double wow!! Your two most recent posts with such beautiful photos leave me grasping for just the right superlative adjectives or words to use in my comment. Hmmm..seriously stunning Southern spring snapshots!

    Jon in Vicksburg, Miss. on 4-4-08

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  2. You must have been reading my mind! I was trying to find the name of that first shrub just yesterday. We visited a garden that had one. It was kind of staked and gathered up around the bottom so that it didn't sprawl, which I thought was interesting too. I love that color yellow best, I think - really eye-catching!

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  3. YOU have some beautiful scenery in your garden...I love the work you have put in...Envy is my sin!...*winks*

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  4. Phillip, you have such a beautiful garden. All that work shows. I wish I lived in your zone instead of zone 6. You grow some plants I have longed to have.

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