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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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Fig & Almond Cake


A lady who visited our garden back in June brought us figs. I made the following cake which was very simple and fast. The figs were honey figs and very delicious. They were really sweet so I omitted sprinkling them with sugar. 

Fig and Almond Cake

4 tablespoons butter, melted, plus butter for greasing the pan
1 cup raw almonds
1/4 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinking
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. salt
3 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 tsp. almond extract
12 to 14 ripe figs

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan or pie pan.

Combine the almonds and 1/4 cup sugar in a food processor and grind into a coarse powder.

Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Pulse to combine.

Whisk together the eggs, melted butter, honey and almond extract. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Remove the stems from the figs and cut in half. Arrange the figs cut-side up over the batter. Sprinkle the figs with sugar. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown.

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
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