Skip to main content

Featured

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 Hyland / Beckman garden


On the way back from the Wisner/Orloff garden, I stopped at another Open Garden, that of  Bob Hyland and Andrew Beckman. It is located on a hillside overlooking the St. Johns area and nearby Sauvie Island with some nice views of several mountain peaks. 

The late afternoon sun was quite harsh and not the ideal situation for good photos. Much of the garden was shaded which helped.

















Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. This garden looks like it is on a hilly area. I like the natural feel of this place. That big ball at the end is a fabulous sculpture.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That barberry is stunning. And I agree with Lisa; that sculpture is terrific. Perfect scale for outdoors.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love how the long border along the driveway frames your entrance and then the rest of the garden unfolds as you walk around the garage. I've visited several times and it just keeps getting better!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gardening on a slope seems so challenging to me; they did a wonderful job of it. The rock steps are kind of perfect; love them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I visited a few years ago , it's a lovely garden !

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lovely, Phillip! Thanks for sharing these. Oh that [barberry] and the purple spilling down the hill! Nice to see it after having visited a couple years back, when younger. (The garden I mean! I suppose I was younger too...)

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a beautiful space. They work hard don't they? How is your Washington garden coming along? I'll go look at your Bloom Day post to see.~~Dee

    ReplyDelete
  8. I am still loading up on plants inspired by a visit to this garden a couple of years ago. Now if I could only emulate the perfect placement these guys exercise with apparent ease.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment