Lost Gardens of Heligan

The Heligan Estate is in Cornwall (SW England) and was the home to the Tremayne family who from the early 1600's developed elaborate gardens.  These gardens ran to ruin after the First World War when virtually all the gardening staff were lost.  By 1990 the whole garden was overgrown with laurel, brambles and other self seeded trees and most of the infrastructure had virtually collapsed and was forgotten.  It was re-discovered by Tim Smit and John Nelson when Tim was exploring the area. Tim and John undertook to restore the gardens to their former splendour, and through a combination of cunning and perseverance succeeded.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

The garden was spectacular in its day with a huge collection of impressive rhododendrons and tree ferns. They even grew pineapples and grapes in cold England!  They have managed to re-plant many of the old varieties of vegetables and fruit from Pre-1913 including pineapples!  Its pretty amazing to rediscover the Victorian ingenuity and to learn how much they understood about the cycling of materials - We take for granted that back then in their pre-fossil fuel age sustainability as we know it was key to their survival.

Geoff checking out the cold frames and glass house in the Mellon Yard

Lucy listening to the story of the Pineapple Pits. Note round cut edges on glass on glass house and trained apples in the foreground.

Fruit trees trained against walls in the veggie garden

We spent a lovely sunny day at Heligan walking through the walled flower and vegetable gardens, looking at the bee boles (beehives set in a wall where the bees 'nest' in a woven straw basket), and through the spectacular 'feature gardens' like the sundial garden, the scented garden, the italian garden, the Ravine (alpine garden), the North Summer House and Flora's Green with its impressive Rhododendrons and Azaleas.  We also walked through the 'Jungle' which is planted in a valley and has an impressive collection of tree ferns (from New Zealand), redwoods, and massive swamp rhubarb amongst other plants.  

Geoff with a Rhododendron

The Jungle - Indigenous deciduous trees in the background with Rhododendrons from the  East, Tree ferns from New Zealand and other more tropical plants in the foreground.  Amazing!

Some of the most fascinating aspects though were not the organic components, but the man-made structures.  The cold frames and glasshouses with beavertail cut glass to make the water run down the centre of the pane and not the wooden edges and so preventing rot.  The pineapple growing pits with their specialised heating system that required 100 tonnes of manure to fill.  And of course the ram pumping system that they installed to bring water up from the river to fill a reservoir to water the garden and for use in the house.  This system is fascinating as it uses no external power source, just the power of flowing water and can pump up to 100m elevation over 2km!  These pumps were installed over 150 years ago at Heligan and the company that installed them came and helped the restorers uncover the pumps and got them pumping again! Pretty impressive!  More information on the pumping system can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram

The Rhododendrons were fantastic!

It is really amazing to see what passionate wealthy gardeners could do back in the day!

Check out more about The Lost Gardens of Heligan on their website at www.heligan.com