Lost Gardens of Heligan

Lost Gardens and nearby Mevagissey

Today was another beautiful and fine day, so to make the most of it we visited The Lost Gardens of Heligan. These wonderful gardens belonging to the Tremayne family since the mid 1700s were built up over successive generations of keen horticulturalists into acres of magnificent landscaped gardens, but fell into decline during the war when the gardening staff joined the war effort. The mansion was also used post war as a place where officers suffering from shell shock could come and recover and was eventually sold off and is now not part of the estate or open for public viewing.

the manor house

Barb at the sun dial in Italian gardens

For sixty years or more the gardens languished and became an overgrown and falling down mess.
A BBC Gardner's World documentary in 1991 show a keen band of gardeners  taking on the project of rescuing the gardens from oblivion and  restoring them to their former glory They uncovered some rare and historic plantstock that had survived years of neglect. The project is on-going today and they have added some modern garden sculptures as features and set it up very well for the hoards of visitors who come each day.

There are some 200 acres of land in the Estate and there are many different garden areas to wander through. Everything from formal flower gardens, to vegetable plots with pineapple pits,,jungle rainforests and hidden grottos and old-fashioned bee boles set in a wall. There's also lots of farm animals: pigs and piglets,cows and calves, sheep, geese, chickens,horses and goats. The little kids we saw visiting especially loved this area.

The tea rooms sell healthy foods and home made baked goods from produce grown on the Estate and they also sell plants  and seedsin the shop. What a pity I can't bring anything back to Australia.

We had a wonderful few hours here and really could've spent the whole day, but we also wanted to visit nearby Mevagissey. This very cute little harbout village has a rabbit warren of very narrow streets, just big enough for one vehicle to pass through. There are no pavements so you have to watch out for traffic and plaster yourself up against the shop front so the car can pass.
The harbour area was totally gorgeous. Full of colourful fishing boats and people. There were several groups of kids swimming in the water (there's no beach here) treating it as a public pool and diving in off the pier.