If you ever go to England, go to Cornwall and spend at least a day at the Lost Gardens of Heligan (http://www.heligan.com/ ). Due to a flat tire we only spent four hours there and we didn’t see even half of the 400 acres of incredible restored gardens. The story is this: a thousand acres on the southern coast of Cornwall has belonged to the Tremayne family for about 400 years. At the end of the 1800’s, one of the Tremaynes had built extensive theme gardens. There were walled gardens, enormous hedges, glass houses, cold frames, a pineapple pit where the only pineapple grown in Cornwall grew warmed by horse manure. Melon houses, leisure gardens, formal flower gardens, woods, kitchen gardens and unbelievably, tropical gardens, filled the estate. Due to Cornwall’s position by the English Channel the climate is such that with care tropicals can be grown there. The estate was fantastic; then came WW I, and almost half the family and staff were killed. The gardens were abandoned. Subsequent wars and taxes took their toll, and the gardens became overgrown. Vines, brambles, trees and weeds ran rampant, breaking through the glass roofs, pulling apart brick walls, upsetting carefully laid pathways and covering every trace of the gardens under a head-high blanket of tangled, thorny brush.
Twenty-one years ago, the Tremayne who inheirited the gardens, asked one of the founders of the neighboring Eden Project ( http://www.edenproject.com/ ) to try and restore the gardens. The task was phenomenal and reads like a mystery. Hacking through the overgrowth they found the walls, the foundations and the clues as to what had been. Since then the gardens have been restored. They are everyone’s dream of a garden combined. There is a mound that was a beacon mound during Nepolianic times, but then discovered dates back to the Armada, and then back to Medieval times! There is a jungle with massive gunnera plants and palm trees, about half an acre of vegetables all grown from seed that dates from the late Victorian time, walled flower gardens, ‘antique’ poultry and cattle, unique sculptures recently added, and a wildlife garden to encourage the existence of so many insects, birds and animals that are disappearing. Even with weeding through photos I came up with so many that I want to share, that I’ll just post them below. Visit the website and read up on the Lost Gardens, voted Britain’s Finest Gardens. They are magical.
- Entrance to a magical world.
- The Tremayne who built the gardens holding a single Gunnera leaf in front of his famous pineapple pit.
- Flavors of ice cream… we didn’t get to have any!
- A mysterious mound was uncovered and thought to have been a beacon site in Nepolianic times, and for centuries beyond that.
- Stone steps into the ravine
- The Italian garden
- Ivy coming through the roof, trying to reclaim the building once again.
- Hot houses and cold frames
- Cold frames for veg.
- Espaliered pears of many varieties.
- Writing on the wall of the ‘thunder room’, or original composting toilet
- All plants and veg grown are from the late Victorian period
- Espaliered fruit trees make use of warm wall space
- About a quarter acre of mixed greens.
- Bee skeps (baskets, pre-movable hives) were kept in boles for winter protection.
- A bee skep in a bee bole
- History of the Bee Boles
- A banana grows in Cornwall!
- Melon houses
- Potting shed with greenhouses in a walled area. Sigh.
- Cold frames in the potting shed
- A robin watches, just like in The Secret Garden
- The overgrown remains of mud brick walls
- A very steep pathway lined with chicken wire to prevent slipping
- The Jungle
- A wire sculpture of a woman with her arms out… can you see her?
- A deciduous walkway
- Mud Woman
- A very green man