Homeyard Botanical Gardens

Location, Area, Boundaries, Landform and Setting

The gardens were built by Thomas Rider of Southwark, London and the designer William Sears. They were constructed on a steeply sloping patchwork of fields above the picturesque village of Shaldon.

Homeyard Botanical Garden was created by Maria Laetitia Kempe Homeyard in the late 1920s. Her husband, William Newcombe Homeyard was the inventor and manufacturer of Liqufruta cough syrup. The garden was created from steeply sloping fields with a north-facing aspect, and the first piece of land was purchased by Mrs Homeyard a year after her husband's death. She lived in Ness Cottage at the eastern end of the gardens. The garden design was possibly influenced by various Cornish gardens, as her mother's family owned properties in Veryan and Portscatho.

Gardens and Pleasure Grounds

The main feature of the gardens is the series of paths and terraces, offering glorious views of Teignmouth and beyond, with a Cupressus macrocarpa avenue leading down to a spring-fed pond. A sham castle was built in 1931 and was once used as a summer house. Now, sadly it is in a dilapidated state.

Mrs Homeyard died in 1944, and in 1950 Teignmouth Town Council purchased the gardens from the Public Trustee. The gardens were officially opened in 1955. In the early 1990s a Friends' group was established and has cleared and restocked the pond, and published a leaflet on the history of the garden.

Work in the gardens from 1995 to 2000 has seen the removal of the Cupressus macrocarpa avenue and the thinning of the dense screen planting along the garden boundary with Horse Lane. These works have provided considerably more light to this part of the garden. The maintenance of hard landscape features is ongoing and since 1997 the main flight of steps through the garden from Torquay Road were reconstructed.

365 trees and shrubs were reputed to have been planted but only a few of the originals survive, among them: three fantastic Weeping Beech (Fagus Sylvatica Pendula) specimens which dominate the lawn area around the Italianate gardens, the Strawberry Tree (Arbutus X Andrachnoides) a native of Greece, and the large Monterey Pines (Pinus Radiata). More unusual recent plantings include the Maidenhair Tree (Gingko Biloba) and three Tree Ferns (Dicksonia Antarctica)

Mrs Homeyard entertained her friends to tea and bridge in the 'Castle summer house'