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House is Tearoom
Gift Aid: Adult £6.95; Child £2.75 Standard: Adult £6.30; Child £2.50; Group rate £5.80pp
Limited facilities for disabled.
The Drake Manor, Buckland Monachorum
Tavistock, Devon
The Garden House is a magical place where inspirational planting blends seamlessly into a timeless Devonian landscape and where luxuriant, brilliant colour creates unforgettable panoramas. The enchanting terraced walled garden, with its 16th century tower ,was developed in the 1940s-1980s by plantsman, Lionel Fortescue in the romantic cottage style.
There is a series of vivid gardens in a more naturalistic style, which include a maple glade, a South African garden, a bulb meadow, a quarry garden and a wild flower meadow. This 8-acre gem of a garden abounds in pathways along which to enjoy the sights, scents and the abundance of plants.
The garden was started in the 1940s by Lionel Fortescue, a retiring master at Eton. Lionel was the son of a painter of the Newlyn School, inheriting a good eye for colour as well as being an exacting plantsman. Over a 40-year period he created a garden regarded as one of the best in the West Country. The Fortescue Garden Trust was established in 1961 and the charity maintains its ownership of the garden today.
The second phase of the garden's development took place under Keith Wiley for 25 years from 1978 onwards and included the creation of a series of gardens that took their inspiration from the natural world. Matt Bishop is the current head gardener and is especially well known for his expertise with snowdrops and bulbs. He has also undertaken a major refurbishment of the original Fortescue garden.