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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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Bourton House

Located in the village of Burton-on-the-Hill, in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, Bourton House is an eighteenth-century manor house with a sixteenth-century Tithe Barn. It is surrounded by a three-acre garden and a seven-acre walled pasture that is now planted with specimen trees.


The Jacobean-style house was originally built in 1598 and was shortly thereafter purchased by the wealthy London lawyer Sir Nicholas Overbury. There is a dark history involving Overbury's son, which includes adultery and murder. It is quite a convoluted story, and I don't believe any of the shady dealings actually took place at Bourton House. You can read the story here and decide for yourself.

An interesting note about these manor houses and gardens is that the front of the houses usually faced the back of the property. At least that was the case with Hidcote and Kiftsgate. The same here with Bourton House, where the entrance to the property (right next to a busy street) contained a little walled garden, some concrete planters, the entrance to the Tithe Barn, and another building to the side that I wasn't sure what purpose it served.



A narrow passageway leads to the gardens at the back (er - front) of the house -


A small greenhouse was bursting with many exotic plants -



 And then we come to the gardens, which include several terraced areas that extend along the back and side of the house.









The Shade House -



The Tithe Barn is the original building built in 1570. It preserves the dedication stone with the initials "RP" for the then owner, Richard Palmer. The tithe barn was used in the Middle Ages to store tithes (sometimes in the forms of agricultural produce) collected from the community. Today it serves as a gift shop and small cafe which had drinks and a delicious array of desserts.



The house has seen several owners over the past century. In 1983, Mr. & Mrs. R. Paice, moved in and set about restoring and developing the gardens. In 2010, new owners continued to enhance the gardens, and it remains open to the public.

(Visited May 7, 2025)

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
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  1. Kris PetersonJuly 26, 2025 at 5:03 PM

    Now that's a proper shade house! The greenhouse looks great too. Oh, to have that large a garden - and gardeners to help maintain it!

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  2. Ardith FergusonJuly 27, 2025 at 7:14 PM

    Oh, I love the basket weave pattern on the water feature structure!

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  3. tz_gardenJuly 29, 2025 at 12:54 PM

    Woah, now THAT's a shade house! Lovely grounds, such a dream.

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