Skip to main content

Featured

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...
2 comments
Read more

The perfect spot

This is a neighbor's cat but he may as well be ours since he spends 90% of his time in our garden. We call him Chester. He has the sweetest personality and has the oddest choice for sleeping areas. When he was smaller, he would curl up in a pot of portulaca on top of the garden wall but I guess he outgrew that. Now he prefers the birdbath.



Ah, the life!



Uh, would you get out of here with that camera so I can get my beauty sleep?

Email Post

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 23, 2008 at 10:21 PM

    Ah, he's well positioned in the bird bath. Do you think he knows?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JessJune 24, 2008 at 6:04 AM

    I love these photos!! What a life!

    ReplyDelete
  3. GailJune 24, 2008 at 11:16 AM

    It's really a good thing we can't read their minds!

    ReplyDelete
  4. RandyJune 24, 2008 at 3:22 PM

    He's doesn't have a care in the world. Animals are so entertaining. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. CiNdEe's GaRdEnJune 24, 2008 at 10:21 PM

    He has the perfect spot to catch a bird(-: He is just pretending to be sleeping...

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJune 25, 2008 at 5:23 AM

    What adorable pictures. I just love having cats in the garden. We have our orange cat and the neighbor's black cat sleeping in our back garden all the time. Their calm, peaceful nature lends a zen-like atmosphere to that area.

    Jan
    Always Growing

    ReplyDelete
  7. KC MO Garden GuyJune 29, 2008 at 6:16 PM

    Animals make our lives so much richer!! Even if they aren't ours!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Philip BewleyJune 30, 2008 at 8:48 AM

    That is just the cutest thing!

    ReplyDelete
  9. RhondaJuly 1, 2008 at 1:16 PM

    LOL...now that's a pick me up for sure. I love to visit a blog that makes me smile. Thanks for sharing that.

    ReplyDelete
  10. EveJuly 2, 2008 at 12:13 PM

    He sure does dress up an empty birdbath quite nicely. I love cat pics. I have three of my own.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment