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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...

Fort Vancouver Garden



I was not interested in watching the debate last week, so I decided to get out of the house. I've been wanting to visit the Fort Vancouver Garden for years and decided to go on the spur of the moment. 

Once I got there, it occurred to me that this was not the peak time to see a vegetable garden but what I did see was interesting and there were quite a number for visitors milling about. 

This garden once comprised eight acres and the food grown there fed the Hudson's Bay Company Fort's  residents. Today's garden is a smaller version and the vegetables and flowers grown there are some of the same varieties found in the fort's records.











Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. You chose a great way to spend the day, instead of tv. It's a lovely garden, I really like photo #3 showing off the pathways.

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  2. As vegetable gardens go, that's a very pretty one, especially given how late in the season is is!

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  3. Your photos are beautiful. I especially like the sunflower. We went in mid-June and again in late July. I guess it's time to go again to see the progression through the seasons. In June the rose arbor was completely covered in beautiful white blooms.

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  4. It sure looks like a beautiful place even here at the end of the growing season.

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