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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...

Lily 'Caravan" and "Silk Road"


The lilies are beginning to bloom. I think they are spectacular plants. They struggle to reach for the sun in our garden and the stalks aways flop over and have to be staked, otherwise the beautiful flowers end up nodding towards the ground. This is one of my favorites - "Caravan" - which I purchased many years ago from The Lily Garden in Vancouver, Washington.

Another good one is "Silk Road" (pictured below).



Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. Phillip, I love lilies as well and appreciate them more every year. They fill a void in my garden between rose flushes and before the Rose of Sharon and fall perennials kick in.

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  2. These are beauties. How can anyone not like these gorgeous plants? I would love to have many more than I have now. They are such an easy plant to grow. I too have to stake them. I don't know many who don't have to stake their lilies.

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  3. I haven't had much luck with lilies here, but I'm not sure why. I do have a few plants looking good about now, so maybe I'll have more blooms this year. It's been very rainy this year, so perhaps they like more rain? Yours are gorgeous!

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