The gardens of Cornwall

After a rather too leisurely breakfast with David and Rosemary we set off for Penzance with plans to visit two of Cornwell’s most famous gardens, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and Trebah, on the way. I had seen the series of television programs made on the restoration of the Lost Gardens and was very keen to see the actual garden and Trebah was highly recommended by David and Rosemary.

Ed and I were surprised that anyone ever found the Lost Gardens. Even with a GPS we couldn’t! We careered around the area, trying to turn in impossible places and plunging down lanes so worn they were almost tunnels. Every now and then we would come across similarly confused people until, finally, we came across a small sign pointing the way and arrived at our destination.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan are now one of the most popular botanical gardens in the UK. They were created by three generations of the Cornish Tremayne family from the mid-18th century up to the beginning of the 20th century. Each generation added to the gardens, which were considered to be very innovative and housed a number of rare and exotic plants including a collection of rhododendrons purchased from Joseph Hooker in 1851. Joseph Hooker was Charles Darwin’s close friend and a great English botanist. The new species of Himalayan rhododendrons were among his great discoveries.

The gardens include these aged and colossal rhododendrons as well as camellias, a series of lakes fed by a ram pump over a hundred years old, highly productive flower and vegetable gardens, an Italian garden, and a wild area filled with sub-tropical tree ferns called “The Jungle”. The gardens also have Europe’s only remaining pineapple pit, warmed by rotting manure, and two figures made from rocks and plants known as the Mud Maid and the Giant’s Head.

Before the First World War the garden required the services of 22 gardeners to maintain it, but that war lead to the deaths of 16 of those gardeners, and by 1916 the garden was being looked after by only 8 men. In the 1920s Jack Tremayne (the last of the direct line) decided to live in Italy and lease out Heligan.

The house was tenanted for most of the 20th century, used by the US Army during the Second World War, and then converted into flats and sold, without the gardens, in the 1970s. Against this background the gardens fell into a serious state of neglect and were lost to sight, disappearing under a blanket of vines and ivy.

A member of the Tremayne family, John Willis, lived in the area and in 1990 was responsible for introducing record producer Tim Smit to the derelict gardens. He and a group of fellow enthusiasts decided to restore the gardens to their former glory.

The restoration proved to be an outstanding success, not only revitalising the gardens but also the local economy around Heligan by providing employment. The gardens are now leased by a company owned by their restorers, who continue to cultivate them and operate them as a visitor attraction.

We clambered down steep slopes and across rope bridges and only the thought that if we waited any longer we would miss Trebah Gardens caused us to leave.

We raced across the country heading for the coast and finally, at the end of the road, we came to the gardens. Trebah is a 26-acre sub-tropical garden and, of all the gardens we have seen, is one of my favourite gardens.

It was first laid out as a pleasure garden in 1831 by Charles Fox, who paid meticulous attention to the exact positioning of every tree. His son-in-law, took the work further and Trebah nowboasts nine official UK Champion Trees. A tree becomes a champion when it is either the tallest specimen of its kind or has the largest girth or even both.

From 1939 to 1981 the garden fell into decline. During the Second World War, Trebah was used for military purposes and the assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy was launched from Polgwidden Beach, at the foot of Trebah Garden. There is an inscription on a Memorial Slab at the foot of the gardens: “To the officers and men of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division, who embarked from Trebah in June 1944 for the D-Day assault on Omaha Beach. We will remember them.”

In 1981, on their 64th birthday, Tony and Eira Hibbert bought Trebah as their retirement home. They were persuaded to give up the first three years of retirement to restore the garden. When Major Hibbert agreed to three years, little did he know it would become a quarter century. The decision, he eventually wrote, “has given us the happiest twenty-four years of our lives and had we not taken up the challenge we’d have been dead long ago of gin poisoning and boredom.

The garden was opened to the public in 1987 and by 1989 visitor numbers had reached 36,000. The Hibbert family then gave the house, garden and cottages to the Trebah Garden Trust, a registered charity, to ensure that the garden could be preserved for future generations.

Trebah is a wonderful garden with imaginative and beautifully coordinated plantings. It leads down the valley to the beach with streams and waterfalls and the most magnificent trees.

We must have been the last people to leave and the gates were being locked as we left. Thankfully Penzance was not too far away and we collapsed in our room at the Penzance Hotel for a few drinks and room service.

Tomorrow we start heading back to London with a few side trips – the first being St. Michael’s Mount, which we can see out of our window.