Keith Wiley's garden at Wildside

For our Garden Tour 2024, the choice of area was made as usual by selecting a particular garden we wanted to see, and then staying in the area for 4 nights and visiting lots of other gardens in the area. The difference being it doesn't normally take me so long to write about it! Last year's trip was based around wanting to see Keith Wiley's garden at Wildside. I was first attracted to the garden by reading about the Dieramas Keith has planted in his garden. We went when they were looking very good:

The story of the garden needs to be set in the context of the fact that Keith Wiley was Head Gardener at the Garden House from 1978 to 2003 and then bought 3 acres of land down the road and set about creating a garden there with his wife and creative partner, Ros who sadly died in 2019. The garden is still being created from a flat field with three main areas: lower garden, courtyard and canyons created from moving 110,000 tonnes of soil. The first photos show the canyons interspersed with pools.