Caerhays with its Nash Castle and National Magnolia Collection is the fairy tale perfect garden. Perhaps the best of our Roseland Peninsula forays. Not just one of the best in Cornwall, or even in Britain, but perhaps it fits squarely in the world’s great gardens. 
It is a perfect example of how both structure and planting are in harmony with each other to create an art form as good as any picture in the National Gallery. Caerhays is the center of all things Rhododendron, Azalea, Camellia and Magnolia, yet it is the castle that holds the gardens together, giving it its strong narrative structure. Nash, architect of the Brighton Pavilion, has an accessibility lost by the more grandiose and cold great houses with their stiffer gardens. The castle is the setting for a garden that is both beautiful and playful. It was built to be part of the fantasy landscape where mountains were moved and estuaries blocked.
But the creation of nature is not cheap and after moving hills to get the perfect views the owner went bankrupt. The whole valley was bought by the Williams family who moved more hills to create views down their little valley to the sea and the little perfect Cornish cove, with its own antique folly perched on the cliffs above. A picture perfect scene in nature was created.
The Magnolias that a visitor can see today are huge and magnificent, with some of the oldest plantings in the country. They are trees of such immensity and magnificence that I stood in awe and just stared at the largest Magnolia I have ever seen, standing tall along side the copper beech. Perhaps in the jungles of China there are trees this large but the little valley seems blessed with the right soil, the right temperature and the right protection from wind to be a Himalayan heaven on our shores.
Having been uncertain of Rhododendrons and Azaleas for a life time, I at last get them in all their various glories and flash gaudy flowers. Tumbling down the valley in soft rolls against the leaf tops of trees beneath interspersed with the Dicksonian tree fern and evergreens, the shrubs look in perfect harmony. Not a garish plant in sight as they are all so well placed and correct in their landscape. 
The Azalea “Hinodegiri” for instance, one of 50 introduced by EH Wilson from Japan, blended in to the valley with complete naturalness despite its bright pink profuse flowers.
So many Camellias as well, bred especially by the Williams family to bring the best out in the plants. Deep shiny leaves and thick petalled handfuls of colour in healthy mounds of green leaves. Pinks, reds, whites and oranges galore in the woods, and trees from canopy to trunk level.
Looking down from one of the designed perspectives, where the valley folds either side of the castle, I realise what makes this garden so great. Nature has not been left to chance, just like at Stowe, Britain’s other world renowned garden we are standing in a picture framed by man’s imagination. Nature has been dismissed with bucket loads of earth and years of labour to remove all that is not smooth and elegant to get that perfect view with the perfect planting. The eye travels with such ease to see one glory spot and to move over the flower tops to the sky and trees beyond. An eighteenth century equivalent of photo shopping a picture. 
A repeat in varieties also helps prevent mental exhaustion, that awful businesses in planting scheme where more novelty leads to less beauty. A gentle repetition of a Lilac variety of Azalea, “Caerhays Lavender” I think, has been used to calm down and enhance the show offs that Rhodos and magnificent magnolias are. Even better the rides and walks are not too tidy so a gentle blurriness at close level stops sharp edges from jarring against the soft hillsides as they roll downwards to the sea.
But the energetic Williams family didn’t just renovate the Castle and valley. They set about collecting plants, particularly Camellias and Magnolias from China, Sikkim and other exotic and far away places which were slowly opening up to the intrepid plant finders. Caerhays provided a home for some of the most exciting plants of their day, and the history of the plants and their garden are interlinked inextricably.
A final point, for the visitor, was the reliable labelling of plants with its name and even who collected it which added another layer of understanding to this wonderful garden. As a science museum, a botanical wonder and a place of beauty, Caerhays is surely a world garden.
Superlative.
Fleurs Garden 