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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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Spring

 
I feel like the new season really begins the day I uncover the water features, uncover the garden statuary and the patio furniture. 

I didn't get all that done today but I got the water feature going which took me several hours because I'm plugging it up through the garage this year. I run the extension cord through a PVC pipe underground so I had to reposition that and dig a shallow trench. I worked all afternoon on it after working this morning in someone else's garden. It was beautiful and sunny today after previous days of cold and wet.

I noticed today that plants are budding out. 

The grass in the front looks great -
 

 

In the back, not so much -
 

 

More pruning to commence after the bins are emptied on Thursday -
 

 

This morning on my Facebook memories, Camellia 'Bella Rossa' popped up as blooming one year ago today. I checked it and it has 3 blooms. More to come I'm sure as last year it was covered with blooms -
 

 

Camellia "Mathotiana' -
 

 

Spirea 'Ogon' - always the first shrub to bloom -
 

 

Euphorbia wulfenii -
 


Euonymous albomarginatus -


 
Arctostaphylos 'Sunset' (Manzanita) -



 
Awaiting an empty bin (two bins is not enough!) -


Check out this gorgeous rhododendron! This is from Rueben Hatch's garden. It is Rhododendron lanigerum -



Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
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