Caerhays, surely one of Cornwall’s best gardens?

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.

Wild flowers versus Trelissick

We took the Truro ferry up the Fal, past the mussel farms. Our aim was to disembark at Trelissick, see the much lauded National Trust gardens and then take King Harry’s ferry over the short stretch of water before walking home, back to St Mawes.

After a journey rivalling any tropical beauty spot, we paid our nine pounds each to enter “One of Cornwall’s best wooded gardens”, “A plantsmen’s garden” we were assured by the guide.  Sadly, it did not hit the spot. With so much natural beauty in Cornwall, a garden in this county needs to either embrace its landscape, or compete against it.  Trelissick did neither. The rather pedestrian path ways gave no hint of adventure, the planting looked mundane, no matter how clever the species were.  We wandered and walked under large trees full of rhododendrons, camellias dripping with delicate and unfrosted flowers, tree ferns balancing on the steep sides. They were not a patch on Caerhays which we saw later in the week.

Well, I saw the lovely views, with tumbling hills where the Azaleas and rhodos couldn’t look anything other than spectacular, but a rather dreary bedding schemes closer to the house. A lovely wisteria up by the entrance promised a beauty that did not unfold, we were too early, mundane sweeping lawns, and sensible pathways leading up ordinary avenues did not compete with the footpaths of wild flowers just beyond the boundaries leading in to the verdant greenery of the Cornish countryside. And for the rest of the garden, a pleasant place, if a tad municipal, with pathways suitable for wheel chairs, nice helpful signs to vistas, and the most beautiful place, carefully planned with an interesting array of china, flowers and books was the shop.

I felt that the word “A plants man’s” garden is meant to intimidate people who feel let down by a garden.  It must be the fault of the ignorant who just don’t understand real  horticulture if the garden doesn’t zing.  After all a real plants man would understand what they were looking at.  All I saw was a dreary, municipal place of varied plants suited to the warm climes, and a lay out designed to cope with huge crowds descending on the paths and lawns, and to get them from A to B easily.  I suppose crowd control and gardens are always on opposite sides of the design spectrum.
The best thing about the garden was not the plants but the amazing views up the river, or if you turned and walked to a different vista, out to sea. 

We escaped as my husband finds crowds a bit tricky and wandered back along the road from King Harry’s ferry.
Getting lost we did too much road, but the grassy banks alight with green and gorse lead us onward towards St Just.  A little lane end table selling quails eggs for two pounds for a dozen cheered us up as we thought of supper.  Give me wayside flowers on the verge of a quiet country lane over a dreary plants men’s garden any day.

Why gardeners like the feel of earth beneath their feet, even on the Fal estuary.

For all those who travel abroad and can’t see the beauty at your feet, St Mawes and the Fal estuary in Cornwall gives as much watery pleasure as the Kerralan Water ways in southern India. I know, as I have been too both.

For a gardener, staying in St Mawes causes some unexpected problems.  I was there for the gardens of Trelissick, Caerhays, Lamorran and to walk and enjoy the wild flowers. My husband was there because he is fond of me and happy to wander in beautiful places. Neither of us are boaties, but the sea is very beguiling, calling with its wet beauty for the unwary.  Over the years I have learnt my lesson that an appalling reaction to motion and an enjoyment of the sea do not go hand in hand. My husband has learnt that he will be shouted at and fails miserably as a crew.  But here on the River Fal, we wanted more water, to be in it and around it. All the local shops had mugs with maritime jokes “Ancient mariner” “Galley Slave”  “I am the captain of the ship”.  Knots abound on tea towels, in frames and the very boats and yachts themselves mocked us as they sat on the water.  So, as two equestrian minded people, we looked yearningly at the water.

 

The amazing ferry system came to our rescue, just like in Kerala. Honest.  Like Cinderella having the magic wand waved over her head and the words pronounced “You shall go to the ball” so my husband and I espied the ferry timetables and realised our desires could be met by the Fal river ferry system.  Even better, there were no ropes to trip over, no dreadful amateur’s desire to sale too far out to sea and no incompetent but well meaning captain who thinks mackerel fishing a good idea and cuts the engine so we can “enjoy the real sea”.  I am not a sailor but a gardener and lover of green. I like water but only if I can see the trees and rocks of a coast, or even better the banks of a river.  Thank goodness for these ferries. Our aim in Falmouth was set with in the municipal library and free for those who haven’t the money to fly to hot climes, a most marvellous local art gallery well worth a visit despite not looking like the Guggenheim.  A pasty on the harbour front, warm and filling and fresh fish for supper. Seagulls, the wind on our cheeks, and the wide open waters, the wonderful ferries gave us the sea in small bite size and enjoyable bites.

A brief excursion to the flowery heavens of St Anthony and St Just, in the Roseland Peninsular, Cornwall.

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 13^th 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)