Keith in the Courtyard Garden, shaded by Aralia elata ‘Aureovariegata’ trees.
Andrew Montgomery
Wildside is a giant experiment in naturalistic, site-specific planting – and also a beautiful and atmospheric space. Twenty-one years ago, Keith Wiley began the transformation of a flat, three-acre field into the most astonishing garden, changing the site’s topography to create a series of banks, ponds, hillocks and quarry-like dells, and offering varying ecological conditions for different plant groups.
Keith’s wife Ros, who died from cancer in 2019, was an artist who captured the nuances of the garden in her paintings, while Keith treats the garden as his canvas, creating a constantly evolving artwork. Rather than setting out to re-create or emulate natural plant communities, he seeks to capture the essence of wild landscapes he has visited: ‘Every one of us can look at a landscape and interpret it in a different way in a garden setting, so the possibilities of this style of naturalistic planting are endless.’
A walk through Wildside is an exciting, immersive experience. It is not at all about the Devon landscape that surrounds it: it is about a series of imagined landscapes. One minute you are on a Mediterranean hillside, the next in a bosky Cornish valley and then onto the flower meadows of Namaqualand, which Keith and Ros visited on one of their plant-hunting trips together. The latest addition is a South African valley garden Keith is developing as a tribute to Ros. It seems extraordinary that plants from South Africa are thriving in Devon, where the average annual rainfall is more than 150cm. But, by manipulating soil conditions, Keith is able to broaden his plant palette infinitely. The natural subsoil here is shale (known locally as shillet) and he has used it to shape the banks and canyons that form the contours of the garden, to create a free-draining, low-fertility base for the planting. In some areas, he has added topsoil or sand to provide different growing conditions, with each plant community finely tailored to its place in the garden and therefore needing no extra water or food.
‘All the plants have to be resilient, but they are naturally hardier and tougher because they’re not pumped up with nutrients,’ observes Keith. ‘You can grow 12-foot delphiniums in this country if you want to, but you can also see them in the wild in the Rockies, where they are only four feet high. It’s a different kind of beauty, a more subtle beauty. One is wow and the other is spirit affirming.’
At Wildside, Keith inspects the towering forms of Angelica sylvestris ‘Vicar’s Mead’, surrounded by the pale yellow flowers of Anthemis tinctoria subsp. subtinctoria.
Andrew Montgomery
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