A Devon Garden – Eclectic Items

I owned this garden and the tiny cottage to which it belonged for 10 years between 2014 and 2024. I bought it because I wanted a place with a bit of room to plant a garden and because in Mid-Devon there is great cycling (if you like lots of hills and bumpy backroads, beautiful hedgerows and nice agricultural scenery).

This was the finished article in June 2022

This is the same view 8 years earlier in October 2014

The garden was a rectangle of scrubby grass shaded by huge trees. Three Ash trees on the left and overgrown Leylandii firs on the right. The firs have been partly stripped by the electricity company because they came too close to electricity wires.

The tree cover had to be reduced, I asked my neighbours about this, neighbours on both sides were enthusiastically in favour of removing the trees, because of the shade they made and the way the Ash trees self-seeded everywhere.

Chopping down trees may seem non-ecological, but the trees prevented growth underneath, I wanted to fill the place with flowering vegetation, making a better environment for insects etc. During the next few years, with flowering plants growing the place filled with bees, butterflies, frogs, slow-worms and hedgehogs, so I think the removal of the trees was justified. Even so one of the Ash trees was not felled but only pollarded and it thrived after a couple of years re-growth. The Leylandii were no loss.

Here it is with the trees reduced to piles of logs and debris and a new fence built on the right of the picture – I built this by hand with the help of the neighbour on that side. A few weekends work. The two trees visible near the house are apple trees, cut-back before I moved in. Of course these were left – lovely trees, and one of them had really good cooking apples.

This is the front garden of course, there was no garden at the back – just a steep bank and wall.

Here is the same shot a year later, May 2016, I have dug the flower-bed on the right by hand through the winter, planted roses along the line of the fence and moved some montbretia and primroses and bluebells. There were quite a few of these around the garden and they started to thrive once the sun was let in, as did the grass. The house faced south-East, so the right side of the picture above was the sunny side of the garden, also the house got the morning sun, nice for breakfast on the lawn.

May 2016 view from the house end of the garden

I put the roses in during the winter, more about those later – this year I wanted to fill the new borders with annual colour, there are dahlias, marigolds coreopsis, sunflowers all grown from seed that spring, then bluebells and primroses transplanted around the garden. To provide a screen against the road at the bottom I planted six hawthorn trees, several pyracantha and a couple of lilac bushes.

The next pictures that I have are over one year later in July 2017 …

Rudbeckia, nicotiana, marigolds, verbena buenos aries, scabious. I was having great fun growing plants from seed – the soil was so loamy, fertile, crumbly, the weather moist and sunny. Such a change from the London garden where the clay soil is guey in winter and solid brick in summer. Everything that I put in the ground in Devon just grew and grew!

Nicotiana in front and montbretia behind – this grew like crazy and multiplied every year so you had to pull it out or else it would die-off in the middle. Loads of these orange blooms in late summer and autumn. A type of crocosmia.

Dahlias from seed (mostly “Bishops children”) more montbretia, purple spikes on the left are linaria which self-seeded and spread all around – great for bees and butterflies from June to September, seed-heads of Nigella which also self-seeded all over, rudbeckia in front which being half-hardy, needed to be grown from seed in the conservatory first, also pretty-much slug resistant.

One thing about the Dahlias – I had great success for 3 years then the slug population built up so much that it became impossible to grow these, as soon as I put the seedlings out they were eaten. So I had to give up on them, when a plant becomes attacked to that extent by pests I just move on to different plants, from year 4 on all the things that I planted had to be slug-resistant. I gave up on French marigolds, planted pot-marigolds instead, all the other plants here are slug-resistant. There is no replacement for the wonderful flowers of dahlias – a shame.

Oct 2017 – if it looks like gaps will appear I simply pop some nasturtium seeds into the ground – the soil is so good and the rain so reliable that they soon shoot up and provide flowers until the first hard frost, which will come any time between mid-October and December.

Roses: I was keen to grow roses, I planted about 30 plants from 20 or so varieties – these are illustrated in another blog post.

In 2018 the frost came on 30 October freezing roses

2018 down near the house, I’ve put a tray of seedlings up on a trellis to make it harder for the slugs to attack, the conservatory in the background is where the seeds are planted in trays, here they are being hardened-off before planting. I’ve built an arch above the conservatory to support two rambling roses that were there when I arrived, I don’t know what this pink one is, but the other one (flowers July/Aug) is I think “Felicite Perpetue” very vigorous, it would cover the house if I let it, great plant except it needs thinning-out every autumn or else it will develop mildew something awful in the spring – it is too lush for Devon’s damp atmosphere.

Let’s jump forwards a couple of years …

A cup of tea in the garden – this is spring, mainly the forget-me-nots flowering, a couple of early roses. All the grass has gone from this part, no room for grass if you can grow flowers!

2023. Here “Felicite Perpetue” has rambled across the front of the house and through the holly bush on the right.

The apricot-coloured rose climbing up both sides of the trellis is “Ghislane de Feligonde” a repeat-flowering rambler, grows in the shade too.

The pictures show the type of garden that I like, full of foliage and flowers, movement, insects. It was such a pleasure to sit here in my little created world, any time of year.