So what might heaven look like? Surely the two exquisite graveyards of St Anthony and St Just must come as close as a gardener can get, at least on earth. St Anthony is tucked behind the gothic monstrosity of Place, built on the site of an Augustinian priory. St Just was developed by a local Victorian rector, sitting on the edge of a tidal pool on the Fal estuary. So if you are in the Roseland Peninsular put the two churches on your list of visits, along side the great gardens of Trelissick, Caerhays and the rest. 
St Just was a name only, cut into the sign post. Without even paying for an exotic holiday destination, our subtle land is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And one of our best hidden secrets are the churches, historically, socially and religiously and we should revel in them more. After all they are free and beautiful and everywhere but ignored by those who want the obvious not the subtle. Who sees the churches in their midst any more other than as local embarrassment of religious passion long since died out, the buildings now irrelevant. How can they ignore such beauties? We should be ashamed of our liberal articulate intelligentsia who ignore the art forms of such beauty, yet praise with ecstatic passion the brutality of the modern art world and put on retrospectives for Lichtenstein and Andy Wharhol. Yes the modern is exciting but it shouldn’t blind us to the ancient art form of church architecture. St Just is such a gem of a church. 
Unseen from the road, hidden down the banks through the archway is a playground for the dead to lie in, with the little 13th century church sitting at the bottom of hanging gardens, on the edge of a tidal creek of jungle like richness.
John Betjeman had complained “It is the ideal resting place for lovers of forest lawn in America or of Woking in Surrey”. But how can the man who celebrated the suburban and the twee not have enjoyed the quaint beauty of St Just, at the head of the tiny creek. I preferred the words carved at the framing entrance to these hanging gardens, “You are nearer God’s heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth.”
Pretty yellow and pink azaleas, stones with carved biblical references and the wild flowers wandered over the paths and turns and steps of the steep sides. It is charming and simple and shows why the best gardens are not just ranks of plants in various forms but have a structure and a narrative. 
Rather like Painswick, it is the vistas that make one remember the Garden of Eden, not the plants as lists in an encyclopaedia. The Rector’s name escapes me, but I hope it gave him pleasure to create such gentle beauty, ably abetted by John Garland Treseder, who helped introduce the many sub tropical plants on to the slopes of the graveyard. Both gentlemen at times look like they may have eaten sea slugs, so psychedelic are the colours and, whilst still drowsy from their colourful dreams try to replicate the myriad of jewel like visions. A free, heavenly space, so good for the jaded to visit. Who needs the sophistication of an urban elite to enjoy this garden of rest. We walked out along the bottom to the left and reached the beach before taking the lane back up and round to the top of the church lych gate, to peer once more into the gardens, resting where the coffins would wait.
Taking the ferry across the ten minute stretch of water from St Mawes, a lover of verdant greenery can see the fingers of trees dipping into the water’s edge, in a tropical profusion of growth and warmth.
As outsiders from Yorkshire we can only envy the damp and warmth of Cornwall that has lead to some of the best gardens in Britain. Protected by the estuary and hills from the open seas beyond, these trees can grow to their full stature, unlike their relations on the hills above, battered and twisted by the sea storms merely fields away. As we got off the ferry for a gentle 3 mile walk around the headland, we had no idea of the beauty just around the corner. We gave a couple of envious look at the smooth pool of water in its neat bay and made some caustic comments on the institutional building of Place. Ugly and gothic (Nicholas Pevsner view was “symmetrical Neo Gothic at its least attractive”) it looks so clearly institutional it came as no surprise to discover it had been used to house displaced Europeans, the army of course, who used it during the war, and it was converted into a holiday camp, all before its owners have taken it back in hand. A pity as it perhaps has one of the most glorious settings in England.
We didn’t know then about the surprise waiting round the back of the house. We walked till a sudden array of bluebells and pink campion pulled us into a wooded glen, where grave stones lay. 
Like a patchwork of tapestry all green and pink and blue and white. So simple was the planting scheme that nature had provided. The Ransomes sprinkled the medieval stones, while camellias leant over the modern graves. A charming way to lie in a flowery mead for any deceased with flowers at ones head and the sea at ones feet. The little path opened between the trees on to a courtyard and the entrance into the church. I love ancient medieval stone arches and this one was a beauty of Romanesque stone carvings. The medieval teeth around the door and the sign of the lamb cross in the stone work gave rise rumour that St Anthony himself had visited as a child with his uncle, Joseph of Aramathea. Rumours of Joseph of Aramathea abound in these parts, sometimes with a young Jesus but other times alone. It is a land of almost pagan Christianity, ancient in its beliefs and dismissive for a long time of Canterbury and the Anglican Church being formed down in the south.
More pink Campion, in vulgar profusion with bluebells led us up past the hidden garden, where white beehives and glimpses of an old orchard could be seen. It is these little gems of flower heavens that keep the keen gardener just wanting more, like a drunkard yearning for another sip of the flowery mead to dull one’s senses with beauty. Of course the coastal footpath wound its way past primroses, and that glory of Cornwall, the white maritime Campion, perhaps my most favourite flower in the world. So much more subtle than the glossy camellia, or showy rhododendrons. 
At times I wonder if all the rhododendron is, is a tree where someone has thrown pink loo rolls high up to decorate its branches. So the little church of St Anthony filled our morning with joy, but an unexpected burst of flowers raised our day to the sublime with the discovery of St Just.
(for those offended by my Rhododendron comment please read of my conversion to the species in a later blog on Caerhays, and the Himalayan gardens in Grewelthorpe, Yorkshire. fleur)
Fleurs Garden 