Lost Gardens of Heligan

I knew the Lost Gardens of Heligan, thriving for 200+ years until 1918 then abandoned, had been 'found' 35 years ago but, from pictures I'd seen, I was still expecting them to feel a bit more lost than they did. The reclamation work has been phenomenal and everything now feels supremely under control. I wish I'd visited 25 years ago.

And the plant sculptures that I've seen enticing photos of were less enticing with such little growth around them - I was a bit disappointed.

It's not the best time of year to visit the walled kitchen garden nor the flower garden, but elsewhere the camelias, magnolias and some of the massive rhododendrons were flowering way above my head. I knew from 'dendron' that rhododendrons were trees not bushes but I had no idea they could have huge, multiple trunk-branches sprawled across the ground.

Nor had it ever occurred to me to grow apple trees in arches. Extra 1

The fern and tropical area, cut through with this rope bridge, reminded me of yesterday except for being, surprisingly, outside.

I really liked the history of the gardens being told from the point of view of the gardeners, not the wealthy family who had owned the grand house. In the walled kitchen garden the thunderbox is now registered in the U.K. National Inventory of War Memorials since many of the gardeners' names were written on its wall, with the dates that they died in the First World War - 16 of the 22 gardeners were killed. Futile, futile war.

I made my way back to the bus-stop sooner than I'd expected where, thanks to a bus driver, I learnt that my best bus route to Truro was via the outskirts of Mevagissey (shoutout to alfthomas). I would not have worked that out myself, with only the Cornish Transport app and googlemaps.

The result being that I had time to discover that I like the feel of Truro a lot more than St Austell. I visited the cathedral (I hadn't realised it was so recent - begun only in 1880), wandered round the very small city and was totally taken aback by the 'modernist' Crown Court. Admired and listed, but it felt consciously and unpleasantly intimidating to me. Extras 2 and 3.