A weekend away..

My boyfriend and I have just returned from the most beautiful week staying with my grandparents in Cornwall. They live as remotely as it is possible to get, close to Land's End. While this means we spent a small fortune on petrol, we saw some incredible sights. My grandma, my main craft inspiration, is a keen gardener and florist and was telling us about some of the gardens in Cornwall, of which I had no idea were so plentiful. In between Truro and Falmouth on one stretch of coastline, are dotted the most luscious gardens I have ever seen.

We had planned to visit Glendurgan, but on our arrival we came face to face with a closed sign. However, to my utter disbelief, another garden we had planned to visit was situated a mere 100 metres down the road! So our Glendurgan day out turned into a Trebah adventure. Glendurgan is a National Trust site, so I had expected the worst; high admission fees and a tearoom that would bankrupt the most flush of visitors. Trebah, however, is run solely through volunteering and government grants, which I think was evident. There was such a lovely feel to the garden; it was intimate, friendly and only cost £4 per adult.

The garden runs down the hillside, eventually reaching a private beach. The beach left a little to be desired on our visit, the howling wind put paid to any conversation and induced chronic earache. Our wintry visit was a real treat. The lady at the front desk had told us how colourful and beautiful the garden was at the moment, yet on closer inspection we found there to be little to no colour. I think she was making excuses for what she believed to be a dull and uninspiring day. In reality, the garden was lovelier in the crisp winter than it might have been on a hot, busy summers day. The addition of a couple of hundred wasps would have inevitably ruined my day.

Trebah Gardens

The next day brought a visit to The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Heligan is a huge estate that was once home to the Victorian Tremayne family. The gardens were technically 'lost' until some semblance of a garden was discovered twenty years ago and it was cut back and returned to it's former glory.

I didn't realise until I got home and looked on the website that Heligan was actually brought to life by Tim Smit, creator of the Eden Project. Crazier still, the Eden Project came after Heligan and was heavily influenced by Smit's experience with Heligan. Having now visited both, I can completely see this. The vastly different environments you pass through in Heligan can be seen in both the humid and Mediterranean biomes at Eden. The jungle at Heligan must be seen to be believed, it really was like being in another country. If you ignored the biting cold.

Moving out of the jungle was the highlight for me. The Northern Gardens were literally like stepping into Downton. I could quite happily have pretended to be Lady Mary for the entire day. And I won't lie, for a large proportion of it, I did. It reminded me so much of the film The Secret Garden that I spent the remainder of the day entirely nostalgic about childhood days, when running around the gardens creating stories and characters might not have been so socially unacceptable. At the age of twenty two and three quarters, I believe that sort of behaviour is frowned upon.

Heligan

The Jungle at Heligan

The story of the gardens just absolutely fascinated me; just imagining that huge space that used to be a working estate being completely forgotten, then rediscovered so many years later, completely stumps me. If you're completely gripped by the story of Heligan too, you will LOVE The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. I won't lie, it is an easy read - about a woman visiting Cornwall, staying in the gatehouse of an old estate, who discovers a forgotten garden. It's so hideously idealistic, I completely loved it.

The length of this post is another quite hideous thing, if you've made it to the end, having read solely about gardens, then you are a stronger person than you thought you were.