Awash with colour and inspiration

A visionary, painterly approach by a nurseryman gardener has resulted in an extraordinarily brilliant display, finds Mary Keen

- Mary Keen

The garden of Wildside, Devon

 The home of Keith Wiley

KEITH WILEY has been practising innovative horticulture for well over half a century, but his naturalistic planting style is very different from that created by Piet Oudolf and his followers. Mr Wiley's visionary, painterly approach, combined with his nurseryman's understanding of what any plant most needs, turns a visit to his Wildside garden on the edge of Dartmoor into a revelatory experience that is almost beyond comprehension.

Twenty years ago, after a long time making the Garden House at Buckland Monachorum, Devon, one of the most famous gardens in England, Mr Wiley and his artist wife, Ros, moved a few miles away to start their own garden and run a plant nursery. The site they chose for Wildside was four acres of flat Dartmoor pasture, where the annual rainfall exceeds 60in and winds blow bleak. For a plantaholic, it was hardly a welcoming prospect. 'Right plant for the right place' is a mantra most gardeners by now know, but Beth Chatto's dictum was turned on its head when Mr Wiley took a bulldozer to the place and began sculpting the unpromising site to suit the plants he knew he wanted to grow.