The Lost Gardens of Heligan

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The jungle

The Lost Gardens of Heligan is one of the most famous gardens in England. It is eight kilometers south of St Austell near Mevagissey in Cornwall . Originally the garden was part of the Tremayne family's 400 hectare estate . The Cornish name Heligan means willow tree .

The garden

Heligan is a large complex with a canyon garden and an English landscape park . Like the Eden Project founded a few years later by Tim Smit and affiliated with Heligan , Heligan takes an educational approach and promotes a sustainable economy. Where before the First World War the life of a gardener was short due to the extremely toxic pesticides - the spray equipment were widow-maker (English for. Widowmaker called) - is now set to ecological agriculture and horticulture.

There are numerous wild animals, some of them rare, in the garden, which Colin Howlett documented in a book. Since 1995 there is an official weather station in the garden , which is looked after by the pensioner Colin Howlett.

The ornamental garden

The Pleasureground , over 200 years old and reopened in 1997, is an ornamental garden divided by hedges and walls in the New Zealand and Italian style with a crystal grotto, wishing well, pavilions, ponds and a 30 m long rock canyon. The Flora's Green , a central lawn is of rhododendrons surrounded by the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker 1847-1849 from Sikkim in the Himalayas brought. Today, with a diameter of 60 m, they are among the largest examples in the world.

The kitchen garden

Productive Gardens is an extensive kitchen garden that makes Heligan an open air museum of horticulture in the 19th century. Heligan now uses Victorian cultivation techniques to produce over 300 types of fruit and vegetables. On the edge of the restored greenhouses there are citrus and peach trees as well as wine. A special feature are some walled trenches heated with horse manure for the cultivation of pineapples  - the last of these facilities from Georgian times .

The jungle

The Jungle came into being 150 years ago in a 300 m long, deeply cut valley, when the interest in subtropical plants awoke in Victorian England . Four ponds connected by a stream were created in the valley. On the slopes, the paths meander through lush bamboo , gunneras , agaves , tree ferns , hemp palms and rhododendrons.

The lost valley

The Lost Valley adjoins the jungle and contains avenues of oak and beech and chestnut groves. Charcoal piles are evidence of their earlier use, and some of them are being operated again as part of a gentle timber industry.

The Lost Valley merges into the extensively grazing parts of Heligans. Since the current operators of Heligans say they have no experience with agriculture, they are used together with neighboring farmers. A classic for Cornwall and England is the enclosure of the pastures with hedges . Since 2002, visitors have been able to observe native wild animals and breeding birds from a hut with remote-controlled cameras. When the Lost Valley was turned back into a landscape park, numerous trees had to be felled and removed. This was done with the help of draft horses so as not to tear up the ground too much. However, the ponds were desludged with an excavator. Sticklebacks , rudds and carp were released in the restored ponds . Soon settled kingfishers , moorhens, herons, cormorants, Canada geese and mallards, and dragonflies , Slim Virgin and mosquitoes were breeding. Could of butterflies Brimstone , buckthorn-Bläulinge , Little Fox , Wall Brown , Speckled Wood , Painted Lady , Red Brown Meadow Brown , Meadow Brown , Cabbage White , Green-veined White , Peacock and Ringlet be observed. Six species of bats also settled.

useful information

Shortly behind the entrance to the garden are two overgrown earth sculptures by the artist Susan Hill . The Mud Maid and The Giants Head allegedly refer to Cornwall mythology .

Views of Heligan

  • Grove of young trees

  • Charcoal Kiln in the Lost Valley

  • Susan Hills sculpture The Giant's Head

  • Susan Hills sculpture The Mud Maid

  • Oak on the "Georgian Ride" in the Lost Valley

  • Pasture in Heligan

  • Rhododendron hedge in the jungle

  • The jungle

  • The jungle

  • Banana plants

  • Wisteria -Tor in the Pleasure Garden

  • A greenhouse

  • Pond at the Northern Summerhouse

  • Rhododendron “forest” in Flora's Green

History of Heligans

Heligan's history, documented in writing, goes back to the 12th century. The property changed hands twice before it came into the possession of the Tremayne family in the Tudor period , who managed it for over 400 years. Between 1780 and 1790 Henry Hawkins Tremayne had the gardens designed as they can be seen again today. In the 19th century, when the garden was in its prime, 22 gardeners worked on the estate for a time.

In the First World War, the decline Heligans began. The gardeners were at war and Jack Tremayne donated the house to the British Army as a rest home for officers. When the Tremaynes got the property back in 1919, they could no longer pay the staff needed to maintain Heligans. The house was rented to friends of the family, but they did not maintain the garden - Heligan was becoming overgrown. Jack Tremayne moved to Italy. During the Second World War the military took over Heligan again, the Americans trained here for the Normandy landings .

In 1970 the Tremaynes sold the house, the property itself remained in the family's possession. John Willis, a descendant of the Tremayne family, inherited Heligan in 1990. Music producer Tim Smit, who moved to Cornwall in 1987, and his friend John Nelson met Willis and Heligan by chance in 1990. Together they began in 1991 with a group of horticultural specialists and many helpers to restore Heligan to the state of the Victorian era . Heligan was named Garden of the Year in the UK in 1999 . Since 1998, Heligan has been the most visited garden in England with over 300,000 visitors a year and a major employer and economic factor in a structurally weak region.

literature

  • Heligan Manor Gardens Project: A Brief history and guide to Heligan. Heligan 1994.
  • Ivor J. Herring: 400 years of Tremaynes at Heligan. St Austell 1999: Federation of Old Cornwall Societies. ISBN 0-902660-26-8
  • Colin Howlett: Heligan wild: a year of nature in the lost gardens. London 1999: Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-06751-9
  • Tom Petherick: Heligan: a portrait of the lost gardens. London 2004: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-84344-3
  • Philip McMillan Browse: Heligan: fruit, flowers and herbs. Penzance 2005: Alison Hodge. ISBN 0-906720-40-0
  • Tim Smit: The Lost Gardens of Heligan. London 1999: Orion.
  • Tim Smit: The Heligan vegetable Bible , London 2002: Cassell Illustrated. ISBN 1-84403-003-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colin Howlett, Heligan Wild, a year of nature in the Lost Garden. London, Orion 1999
  2. ↑ Colin Howlett, Heligan Wild, a year of nature in the Lost Garden. London, Orion 1999, 14
  3. ↑ Colin Howlett, Heligan Wild, a year of nature in the Lost Garden. London, Orion 1999, 112-113
  4. ↑ Colin Howlett, Heligan Wild, a year of nature in the Lost Garden. London, Orion 1999, 114

media

  • Free Range Television (ed.): Heligan. Past, Present & Future. A Tenth Anniversary Celebration. Heligan 2001. (Video-DVD, English)
  • Vivianne Howard (director), Barbara Flynn (speaker): The lost gardens of Heligan: an exquisite garden emerging like "Sleeping Beauty" from its seventy year sleep , London 1997: Channel 4 Video. (VHS video, English)

See also

Web links

Commons : Lost Gardens of Heligan  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 17 ′ 11.7 "  N , 4 ° 48 ′ 48.9"  W.