F. W. Meyer, author of "The Rock Garden" column... Who was he?

F.W. Meyer wrote many articles in the journal The Garden in the early 1900's. I wrote about "The Rock Garden" column in a previous blog. But, who was he? Where did he create these rock gardens? Can I go see one?



At this date, he doesn't rate a wiki entry, but there are references to him from several large estates in the UK. Parks and Gardens UK says he was a landscape gardener and park designer who worked with Messrs Veitch & Sons, Exeter, England. He is known for Minley Manor and Wellington Park.

Major plant digression starts here....

According to Parks and Gardens UK, one of Minley Manor's features is a 600 meter avenue of Wellingtonias AKA Sequoiadendron gigantea! Since I am fascinated at how and why so many California big trees have been planted in other countries, I will digress here. The English Heritage site for Minley Manor mentions that a "fine 450m long avenue of alternating Wellingtonias and limes which extends out through woodland and runs parallel to the Minley Road. The avenue creates a wide grass allée which is bounded by hornbeam hedges on both sides."  The avenue or allée was installed during the period of 1858-1884 by James Veitch. 

For you Californians who were also floored by the name of Wellingtonia, I will blog about that later. But remember, the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington played a major role was fought in 1815, just 40 years before the trees were planted.

Whenever I find a giant sequoia outside its range of the Sierra, I check the Monumental Trees website. I was not able to find the Minley Manor trees listed. Monumental Trees is where I also solved the mystery of what a "lime" tree is. It is probably a Tilia platyphyllos.  Although there are other Tilias that it could be. The trees occur in lime-y soil and maybe Lime is a varient of Linden. More on that later, perhaps.

Currently this property is for sale! From the marketing materials you can soar around the manor lands, starting with the great allée of Sequoias. And this marketing photo shows the allée as well.

From google maps, here's a snap of the Giant Sequoia allée with about 44 Sequoias by my estimate. Impressive!

Digression ends here

So we were talking about F.W. Meyer...and I will continue later.