There's many a gardener who
will be looking out the window over the next few months wishing they were
somewhere else. As snow falls and the piles beside the driveway grow ever
higher, I know I'll frequently be daydreaming about my visit early this summer
to the lost gardens of Heligan. The name alone conjures up evocative images of
a romantic past. The place is stuck in my memory now as it must be in the minds
of the thousands of other visitors that have made the trip through space and
time to the most visited private garden in Britain. It is unforgettable.
The story goes something like
this: Early in the final decade of the last century, a couple of explorers, Tim
Smit and his friend John Willis, made an expedition to the outer reaches of
southwest England, Cornwall precisely, where they made an astonishing
discovery. While in the tiny fishing village of Mevagissey, they heard rumours
of a vanished garden in a tropical valley far above the village.
Cornwall isn't
tropical, but it is lush, wet, rugged country with a long history of pirates
and smugglers, the kind of place where things can easily go missing, even a
garden. Villagers on the Cornish coast have always been focussed on the sea,
rarely venturing inland, except perhaps for a little quiet poaching occasionally,
but no one would admit to that. By blabbing over a pint of cider in the Ship
Inn about lost temples and wishing wells up the valley, a poor fisherman might just
as well admit that he'd been out chasing game on the estate of the local Squire.
Instead, the stories were whispered.
But these hints and whispers
gained a life of their own, as rumours do, and intrigued, Tim and John, following
the hidden paths of poachers, set out to explore the valley. They were amazed to
discover palm trees and bamboo, and as they pushed upwards through tangled
undergrowth and overgrowth, they soon found themselves crawling on all fours
beneath huge, overgrown shrubs and laurel hedges, their way blocked in places
by massive brick walls, derelict stone structures and broken glass.
I imagine
their strained conversation was along the lines of, "I say, Tim, aren't
those thingies the gnarled branches of the extremely rare Rhododendron
prunifolium, native to the Himalayas, and what the Dickens is it doing here in
Cornwall?"
On that day, February 16th,
1990, our two sunny afternoon explorers had discovered the gloomy ruins of
Heligan Gardens, lost in time beneath seven decades of rampant growth. Acres of
themed gardens, grottoes, and a treasure of Victorian follies awaited them.
Over four kilometres of footpaths would eventually lead them to a hectare of
walled kitchen gardens containing the melon frames and pineapple pits that had
supplied the estate with exotic fruit. All about were hundreds of rare plants
from around the world, overgrown specimens from the original collections of the
garden's founders, the Tremayne family.
The area had been under the
stewardship of the Tremaynes since the mid 17th century, although the first true
gardens were largely created during the 19th century. They became one of the finest
in England of the period, with 23 hectares of planted gardens, around 40
hectares of ornamental woodlands, and riding trails crisscrossing an area of
120 hectares. It was a remote oasis of tranquility.
But when war broke out in
1914, the outside world forced its way in. One by one, the large staff of
gardeners joined the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and left for the trenches
on the battlefields of Europe. Most never returned. Their names can still be
seen today, scratched into the walls of Heligan. By 1920, fortunes had changed
for the Tremayne family. The house was leased, the land neglected, and the
gardens of Heligan simply rolled over and slept beneath a blanket of ivy and
bramble until the day Tim Smit and his friend arrived to awaken this idyllic
place.
Thus began the largest garden
restoration project in Europe. The result is a time capsule of a forgotten era,
faithfully restored to its original majesty. A gardener visiting the Gardens of
Heligan today can indeed travel through time and see this wonder almost exactly
as it existed over a century ago. I did and I can't forget it.
First published November 2005 Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury
First published November 2005 Waterloo Region Record and Guelph Mercury
