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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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One Green World


Due to dental surgery, I was unable to do any garden work this week. Since I felt well on Tuesday morning (the day after the surgery) but was told not to lift anything over 5 pounds, I suggested to Michael that we make another trek to Portland to look for a new sewing machine. This saga has been going on for a long time.  A trip two weeks ago was fruitless but he discovered another sewing machine store that sounded promising and it wasn't too much of a headache to get to. This time proved to be the charm - he found the machine he had been wanting - and happy to find a store that he could trust for the future. Let's hope this is a happy ending!

Since One Green World was just right down the road from the sewing center and the saleswoman needed about 20 minutes to get his order together, we decided to kill time there. I first discovered this nursery a few years ago when I was looking for a loquat. 

I've been contemplating another eucalyptus tree ever since I lost ours last year. And One Green World has a big collection of eucalyptus trees. They are a small nursery but have a wide variety of unique plants, especially fruiting trees, berries, citrus, native plants and a great variety of plants that push the zonal limits.






The Variegated Buckthorne is actually a plant we carry at Yard N' Garden Land from time to time.

Of course, we didn't leave empty-handed. We left with three plants -

New Zealand Trailing Tea Plant (Leptospermum scoparium) is an evergreen groundcover with small leaves and white flowers. It is in the myrtle family. 

 Omeo Gum (Eucalyptus neglecta) has large blue-green
 leaves with a purple cast in cool climates.

Acacia (Red Stemmed Wattle) (Acacia rubida) - a fast-growing tree from SE Australia with red stems and yellow flowers in the winter.

Now to figure out where they are going and if I can keep them alive!

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
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Comments

  1. Lisa at GreenbowAugust 25, 2022 at 8:27 AM

    Sounds like a fun day. New plants and New Sewing machine. I bet that new sewing machine can make a stitch similar to that New Zealand trailing tea plant.

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  2. AnonymousAugust 26, 2022 at 7:57 AM

    Glad you are on the mend, and happy for Michael for locating the sewing machine he cavorted, but where are you going to place those trees? Your garden always seem quite full to me :-D
    chavli

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  3. Kris PetersonAugust 26, 2022 at 9:53 AM

    I know of no better use for a little free time than walking a plant nursery. Thanks for your introduction to this one, which when I checked into that trailing Leptospermum I discovered offers mail orders. Shipping to SoCal would be pricey but another source for unusual plants is always welcome ;) I hope you're healing well after surgery.

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