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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...

Two Rose talks next week

I don't know how I managed this but I have two presentations next week on the same topic. And I don't even do this sort of thing that often! Procrastinator that I am, I will be busy this weekend putting the finishing touches on my Powerpoint programs and I also realize we will be having nice gardening weather this weekend PLUS Sunday night is Oscar night. Anyway, I digress.

Monday night (Feb. 28th) I will be at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens talking to the Birmingham Rose Society about the evolution of our garden and the roses that we grow.

On Thursday, March 3 at 11:30 a.m., I will be at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for their gardening series "Get Dirty In The Library" (don't you love it?). My program will be on growing roses. The FLPB has a slew of good programs coming up. Click on the flyer below for more details (also check out their website).

I hope to see you there!





Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. Dang...I wish I could attend, because I know very little about my roses on the property. I'm sure you could teach me everything about them....

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  2. I wish I were there, I really do.... I would love to learn more about your roses. It is so generous of you to share your knowledge and experience with others.

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  3. at least it's on the same topic... that should make it a bit easier.

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  4. Phillip both links to the library aren't working. Northwest Shoals Community College has programs for advanced learning (those over 60). Since they couldn't get out during the snow, I was asked to show my snow pictures of Tuscumbia to them the end of March. I'm trying to decided if I needed to do it in powerpoint or just as a slide show in MS media. Any suggestions? My daffodils started blooming yesterday after the storm. Mary

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  5. Mary, the links just worked for me. I am not familiar with MS Media. I like Powerpoint because it is easy to use and easy to add captions to photos. Aside from that, I'm sure any system would work. I would use what you are most comfortable with. Technical difficulties are not fun!

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  6. Phillip, So glad to finally meet you at the Birmingham Rose Society Meeting! Thanks again for a wonderful talk on your roses! It's awesome to see how people integrate roses into their landscape. You guys have done an awesome job with that!

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