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...
What a delightful cornucopia of evergreens. Each and every are charming in their own way. I really like the small norway pine with those little cones on it and the shaggy blue shrub. Nothing like giving me a bad case of the wants.
ReplyDeleteYou have some really lovely specimens! I admired Cedrus deodara very much when we first moved here, but I was afraid of how big it might get.
ReplyDeleteAlison, this particular one is not supposed to get that big (4' I think).
DeleteI adore conifers. They MAKE the northwest winter garden. There is such a verity of size color and shape I never tire of them. I can never name any of them, including the unnamed specimen you moved the first year. A couple of times I try to relocate a conifer, but it didn't survive. You should feel proud; your move seem to have been very successful!
ReplyDeleteThey're all gorgeous ! Did you get them from Y&G ?
ReplyDeleteI just did a count and they all came from YnG except for five. The sequoia came from Gossler Farms and some of the larger plants (like the Spanish Fir) came from a nursery that is no longer in business. I bought a lot of things there before I even knew YnG existed.
DeleteI followed a photo when researching Catherine Elizabeth and was pleased to find your lovely conifer collection. I have oodles of them. Two hopefully useful comments: I have a Kelly's Prostrate that is over 3' tall and 6-7' wide, from a 10" tall x 3' wide 10 gallon after 10 years. It's still growing several inches a year! And the yellow one at the end of your post looks just like my new Chamaecyparis lawsoniana "Treasure Island". Thanks for sharing your beautiful conifers with us. Steve
ReplyDeleteHi Steven, thank you! Oh my, I may need to consider moving Kelly's Prostrate if it gets that big. I had no idea!
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