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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...

Meredith Nelson's Garden


Another garden on the East Vancouver Mini-Tour a few weeks ago was Meredith Nelson's five-acre garden in Battleground. This is a cottage garden filled with perennials and clematis. It is also filled with wonderful iron-work decorative objects made by her husband Jeff. Check out the gate below!







I don't know how many clematis Meredith has but it a large number. I saw many varieties that I had never heard of. 


I thought this was Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) at first but knew that it was too early for it to bloom. It is in fact a clematis but a different one and I have forgotten the name. 


A very creative fence around the vegetable garden made of wheels (not sure what they are exactly) -



This is such a peaceful setting and so quiet. It makes me long for the country. Thank you, Meredith, for opening your garden. It is fun and very inspiring.










Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. You have so many wonderful gardens in the PNW! I love the flower-filled metal buckets.

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  2. The iron gate is wonderful, and the wheels making a fence. Along with the beautiful flowers, of course!

    ReplyDelete

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