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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...
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Black Tupelo - a spectacular tree for autumn color


This is my favorite tree at the moment. It wins the prize for the most colorful leaves. It is known by a string of different common names - 'Black Gum' (also spelled as 'Blackgum'), 'Black Tupelo', ' Sour Gum' and 'Pepperidge'. I like the name 'Black Tupelo' since we used to live close to Tupelo, Mississippi (birthplace of Elvis). The scientific name is Nyssa Sylvatica - Nyssa after the Greek water nymph and sylvatica is Latin meaning 'from the woods". It is a member of the dogwood family (Cornaceae).

The tree will probably get much larger than I'd like and I'm sure it will cast a lot of shade - not necessarily a bad thing. I did not know until recently that it is a major bird and insect attractant. The female tree produces purple/blue drupes that bees use for honey production and birds love to eat. 

The fall color is spectacular - a combination of bright orange, yellow and deep reds but it was one of the last trees to change color. It does hold them nicely and still has leaves at the moment despite some really strong winds. 

My video shows the tree is various stages over a three week period. The tree is 3 years old and was planted in September of 2018.


Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

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  1. chavlinessNovember 9, 2021 at 8:18 AM

    Once you explained the name's meaning, Water Nymph From The Woods, I was totally invested in memorizing the latin name Nyssa Sylvatica. The fall colors are wonderful and would get even more impressive the bigger the tree gets.

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  2. Kris PetersonNovember 9, 2021 at 9:11 AM

    Wow! It's spectacular.

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  3. Hoover BooNovember 9, 2021 at 4:41 PM

    A very beautiful tree. The autumn color is spectacular, but the growth habit is also lovely.

    Of course I had to go listen to Van Morrison 'Tupelo Honey'.

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