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...
I can imagine how you are having to hold back planting right now when you are used to planting up a storm at this time. We are getting some much needed rain today. It appears that your garden is coming right along. Learning the soil and light conditions are what you can be doing now. Of course it is always fun to dream about what you want where. Your pots look right at home on the patio where you can easily admire them.
ReplyDeleteIt's hot in Alabama Phillip! Glad you're both enjoying the weather. I'm sure those tomatoes will produce some nice fruit soon! I love the deck container colors! Good job!
ReplyDeleteThe summer so far has been nice and cool, I love it. Your vegetable garden is looking very nice. I hope you get the crops you are hoping for to encourage you to keep going: that first cucumber is a good sign. My leafy greens are just slug food... I'll try again next year.
ReplyDeletePhilip.... your description of your weather is almost as if you are describing the weather here.... every once in a while we've been getting up to three days of air conditioning weather, but for the most part it's been very pleasant and the house is left open to the breezes.... then too we've been experiencing some dry weather in July for about three years.... I've begun watering as well... love your veg gardens and it must also be very exciting to grow ornamentals that perhaps were unavailble to you previously because of the conditions regarding weather and soil in your former gardens...
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the cuke :)
ReplyDeleteQueen of the Prairie sure is a stunner!
Great pictures. It must be nice to only use the AC on occasion. Here in S. Florida, the AC runs non stop this time of year.
ReplyDeleteIt is!! It is wonderful. We have only have one day above 80 since July 4th.
DeleteYou've come a long way already Phillip! I didn't realize that the summers were dry there, but the cool weather doesn't surprise me. How pleasant that must be for you! Did you ever grow veggies before? I don't recall that you did.
ReplyDeleteRobin, I did not have a vegetable garden previously with the exception of one at my mother's house. That was 20 miles away so you can imagine I did not have much success with it. This is the first serious one I've had.
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