7/20/17 – Cornwall

We are in Cornwall, the furthest west part of southwest Britain. For me, Cornwall conjures up tales of King Arthur and his Knights, Pirates of Penzance, St. Michaels Mount and Lands End. But Thursday and Friday it will be all about gardens.
Thursday we visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan.
The Tremayne Family owned the Heligan Estate for over 400 years. Each generation added to the development of the 200 acres that made up the estate, but after WWI the last Tremayne closed it up and moved to Italy. By mid century half of the estate had been sold, but for 60 years the remaining gardens lay neglected and became “lost” to the locals.
In 1990 a descendant of the Tremaynes turned a trained archeologist friend of his, on to the history of the gardens. This friend determined to bring the gardens back to life. It took ten years to bring them back and the project was billed as “Europe’s largest garden restoration project.” Now – along with the Eden Project – it is one of the more popular tourist destinations in Cornwall.
So here are our highlights of the Heligan Gardens:
There are easy walking routes around the estate and there are more challenging routes. The challenging routes involve steep paths up and down hills but they bring you to interesting destinations. One is The Jungle, with exotic plants that include fern “trees” fifteen feet tall. A raised boardwalk leads you through the jungle to a rope suspension bridge that is great fun to cross.

The Woodland Walk is great for children with lots of things to climb on, and it has the Giant’s Head and the Mud Maid:

The Home Farm raised heritage breeds of sheep, pigs, poultry and cattle. It also had a sawmill and a woodworking shop:

The Garden is a feature all its own. A huge kitchen garden grows rows of vegetables and herbs interspersed with rows of flowers:

The Pleasure Gardens highlight a large grassy area bordered by the largest rhododendrons ever to be seen. We were walking under a canopy of greenery when we suddenly realized the trees were 150+ year old rhododendrons – and at least 20 feet high!

Now the Pacific Northwest grows Rhodies to be proud of, but they got nothing on the Heligan Rhodies. We missed the blooms by a couple of months but they must have been stupendous to see – the plants dressed only in green leaves were amazing. We copied a photo from the brochure so we all could see how they look in bloom.

We finished off the day with a continuation of our cribbage tournament (Peggy 17 wins, Bruce 16) and an Italian dinner featuring our kitchen window basil privacy hedge.