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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...

Lacock (Wiltshire, England)



After leaving Special Plants Nursery, we headed to Lacock, an English village that is virtually locked in time and owned by the National Trust. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and many of the town's structures were built in the 14th century. The village has been used for many film locations, including some of the Harry Potter films, Downton Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Cranford, etc. 

In addition to the residences (I cannot imagine living there with all the tourists), there were many gift stores, pubs, church and best of all, a chocolate shop. I had a delicious traditional sausage roll.








St. Cyriac's Church -










(Visited May 9, 2025)

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing your step back in time!

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  2. It is really charming! The dog relaxing in the sun is fantastic :).

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  3. What I find the most exciting in English country villages are the old stone buildings, the facad, the mossy garden walls. Some have been standing for hundreds of years and they are so well preserved.
    Chavli

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