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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...

Open Gardens: The Hardiman Garden

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I was very excited to see the garden of Lucy and Fred Hardiman. Lucy Hardiman is a garden designer at Perennial Partners. This garden certainly did not disappoint. Full of vibrant rich colors (purples, blues and pinks, a favorite combination of mine) and accented with artistic architectural structures and art pieces, as well as some favorite plants like hydrangeas and lilies. Note the big crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia 'Zuni') in the above photo. They do grow here!

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Just look at these lilies! I was intrigued by the blue flower and she told me that it is a perennial that she herself introduced to Joy Creek Nursery. It is Galega 'Lady Wilson'.

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It was near sunset when I toured the garden and the diminishing light gave it a magical quality.

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Perfectly placed art pieces

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Yarn in the garden? Why not?

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This is the front entryway garden that leads back to the main garden.
A big thank you to the Hardiman's for including their garden on the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Open Gardens Tour. It was wonderful!

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. Nice photos. Thank you for sharing. I bet the bees and hummers love this garden too.

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  2. You caught Lucy's garden in its prime! Not that it's ever lacking for charm, but I've never seen it so floriferous.

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  3. Wow! That's an incredible garden but one would expect no less from the amazing Ms Hardiman! Love the tree with all of the glass spheres!

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  4. I've seen Lucy's garden a bit later in the year, it's looking just beautiful in your photos. It's a very colorful garden. Now I know what those large shrubs are that I saw in D.C. whose flowers reminded me a bit of lilacs. They must have been blooming crape myrtles.

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  5. Beautiful photos show her incredible color discipline which gives such a dramatic effect. This looks like an entirely different garden than the one I saw almost 10 years ago, which I remember as a shared space among neighbors (?) or maybe it's just been completely reworked.

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    1. I am not sure but her neighbor's garden next door was also open. It was very small but fantastic. I plan to post photos of it next.

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  6. An eye candy this garden is. Every picture is perfect and screams Summer.
    You say: Yarn in the garden? Why not? and I say Why Knot :-)

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  7. Riffing off of Denise's comment, this garden strikes me as a fantastic mix of whimsy and color discipline. Thanks for sharing it with us virtually!

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  8. Thank you for showing this beautiful garden

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  9. Oh my that's so lovely. My kind of garden.

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  10. You captured much of what has earned Lucy her big reputation. We (Joy Creek) had Galega 'Lady Wilson' for sale at Hortlandia but because it was not in bloom at the time, it flew under the radar. Right now, everyone is exclaiming "What's That?!" when they see it in the garden.

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