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...
Although we do not grow our own, the local ones have been great this year. The last two my wife got nearly ran us out of the house, the smell was so intense.
ReplyDeleteThat's great, Phillip! Better luck with the watermelons next year...
ReplyDeleteCantaloupes are finished here in the farm fields. This one looks perfect. We have the same situation here, in that I like watermelon and my DB likes cantaloupe best. I hope you have better luck next year with your watermelons.
ReplyDeleteNone of our watermelons made, either. The one baby succumbed to blossom end rot. We did get a glorious cantaloupe, though; lucky you to have two! Definitely need more vines next year.
ReplyDeleteWe've had good cantaloupes too. If you smell it, it's ripe. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteWe haven't tried to grow our own cantaloupes yet but the one we bought at our market this week was as big as a watermelon and tasted so good!
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