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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...

Wide Shot Wednesday - Looking across the terraces


I have a hard time finding new photo angles but here is one I've not taken before. This is looking across the three terrace beds. You can't see the steps in the center or the far side because of the plants. You can see Crape Myrtle 'Dynamite' blooming just over the fence. You can also see another red splash, the Hibiscus 'Midnight Marvel' that I just wrote about, near the center. The splash of yellow near the center is Cotinus 'Golden Spirit'. The Katsura tree on the left is also providing some yellow color as well. And there is Michael on the far left dutifully watering.

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

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