Great Gardens of Cornwall & Devon

Detailed Itinerary

Included meals are shown with the symbols B, L and D.

Monday May 30: Arrive Cornwall

Meet your tour leader Michael Turner at London Heathrow airport to commence the tour. We have an early departure by coach to Cornwall, stopping en route at Stourhead. Stourhead is probably the most famous and most beautiful 18th-century Arcadian Landscape garden in England. Between 1740 and 1780, banker Henry Hoare (1705-1785) created an idyllic mix of the Classical and the Gothic. The walk around the lake, crossed at one end by its beautiful Palladian bridge, takes in Classical temples, a Gothic cottage, and one of the most dramatic Rococo grottos in England. Following lunch of locally-sourced produce at the Spread Eagle Inn, we will continue to Cornwall arriving in the early evening. We gather together this evening for dinner in the hotel. Overnight St Ives (D)

Tuesday May 31: St Michael’s Mount and St Ives

Following an introductory talk this morning, we travel by coach to Marazion, where we either, depending on the tide, walk the pilgrims’ causeway or cross by boat to St Michael’s Mount. Once a sister abbey to Mont St Michel off Normandy, the island and castle have been owned since the 17th century by the St Aubyn family. After touring the castle, we explore its extraordinary gardens, parts of which date back to the 18th century. This afternoon we return by coach to St Ives to explore the idyllic harbour town with its maze of quaint cobbled streets lined with fishermen’s cottages. The town also has a rich artistic heritage which is celebrated with a plethora of galleries including Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, that you may wish to visit. The Hepworth Museum offers a remarkable insight into the work and outlook of one of Britain’s most important twentieth-century artists who came to live in Cornwall at the outbreak of war in 1939 until her death in 1975. Hepworth described her St Ives studio and garden as ‘a sort of magic’. This evening, we go to The Minack Theatre to enjoy an open-air performance. Overnight Saint Ives (B)

Wednesday June 1: Tresco Abbey Gardens on the Isles of Scilly

Today, we take an early morning flight from Land’s End airport across the sea to the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago off the Cornish coast. Following our arrival on the island of St Mary’s we take the short picturesque boat trip to Tresco, one of the five inhabited islands. Tresco Abbey Gardens are home to subtropical plants and the Valhalla Museum, displaying wooden figureheads from local shipwrecks. First laid out in the 1830s by Augustus Smith around the ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, Tresco Abbey Gardens are still owned and run by the same family. “Here off the coast of Cornwall, spring comes early, autumn stays late, and winter hardly exists at all”: truly a subtropical paradise, brimming with plants that would stand no chance at all just thirty miles away on the Cornish mainland. The garden is home to species from across the world’s Mediterranean climate zones, from Brazil to the Antipodes, from Burma to South Africa. In the late afternoon we take a flight back to the mainland. Overnight Saint Ives (B)

Thursday June 2: The Lost Gardens of Heligan and Eden Project

We leave Saint Ives and the beautiful Mount’s Bay heading east to our next hotel in the countryside outside St Austell. Our first stop on the way is at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Laid out in the 19th century they are a classic example of the Victorian ‘Gardenesque’ style and as such are highly prized for their botanical diversity. A genuine secret garden, the once-thriving Heligan estate was lost for decades under dense undergrowth until a door to one of the walled gardens was discovered by accident in 1990. An award-winning restoration project followed and today we’re able to explore 200 acres of subtropical gardens, ancient woodland and a jungle filled with strange and marvellous plants and trees. The world’s attention was focused via television programs on the gardens ‘rediscovery’ in the 1990s, in which one of the central figures was Tim Smit. The experience was to prove pivotal for Smit, now Sir Tim Smit, in the creation of his Eden Project. Opening in 2001, the Project’s central attraction are its two remarkable biomes, the smaller simulating a Mediterranean environment, the larger a rainforest. In addition to this there are miles of paths that twist and turn up and down the slopes. Overnight St Austell (B, D)

Friday June 3: Trematon Castle and Wildside

A day of modern greats: the first stop is Trematon Castle, home, since 2012, to Julian and Isabel Bannerman, the ‘haute Bohemian’ designers of the magical gardens of Highgrove, Woolbeding, and Arundel Castle, among many others. Their Georgian house sits inside the walls of the Castle (dating back to the Norman Conquest) while the garden plays to the Castle’s romantic and pre-Raphaelite glories. It boasts wild flowers, woodland and orchards all intensified with bold borders full of scent, colour, lustre and Bannerman panache. In the afternoon we travel to nearby Wildside. Since 2004, the garden has been Kevin Wylie’s experiment in ‘new naturalism’, a movement which seeks to work in harmony with nature, allowing plants to thrive much as they would in the wild. Overnight St Austell (B)

Saturday June 4: Lanhydrock and Padstow

This morning we visit Lanhydrock, a late Victorian country house, and one of the loveliest National Trust properties in Cornwall. Dating back to the 17th century, much of the house was destroyed by fire in 1881 and subsequently rebuilt. At the same time, the formal gardens as we see them today were laid out. There is time to stroll the extensive gardens admiring the herbaceous borders, a formal parterre and colourful higher gardens filled with camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons. Next we head north to the coastal village of Padstow, famous for its association with celebrity chef Rick Stein. After a lunch at one of Stein’s restaurants the afternoon is free to explore this charming village. Overnight St Austell (B, L)

Sunday June 5: Castle Drogo

Today sees us heading for the wilds of Dartmoor and our hotel for the last three nights, the beautifully situated Bovey Castle, originally the home of the son of newsagent millionaire, WH Smith. On the way we call in at Castle Drogo, the last castle to be built in England. Constructed between 1911 and 1930, it was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and is now considered one of his finest achievements. Lutyens also designed a beautiful garden influenced by the work he had done in designing New Delhi. Although much of the planting was done by George Dillstone, Lutyens called in his long-time collaborator Gertrude Jekyll for advice. In the evening, we gather at Bovey Castle for dinner. Overnight North Bovey (B, D)

Monday June 6: Montacute House and Barrington Court

Our first stop today is Montacute House: built at the end of the 16th century, Montacute is one of the few Elizabethan houses in England to survive almost unchanged. Its Long Gallery, the longest in England, has, since 1975, been an outpost of the National Portrait Gallery. Its gardens, although replanted in the 19th century, retain much of their original 17th century lay out and form. In the afternoon we drive to Barrington Court. A Tudor mansion, it was the first house acquired by the National Trust in 1907. Its present state of immaculate conservation owes much to the fact that the house was leased by the Trust in the 1920s to Abram Lyle of Tate & Lyle, the sugar conglomerate. The celebrated garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll, was consulted by Colonel Lyle’s wife, Elsie, on the layout and best planting schemes for the garden. At the time, Jekyll was well into her seventies and almost blind, but she was able to advise what would grow best in the limy earth just by crumbling the soil, which was sent to her in biscuit tins. Elsie Lyle visited Jekyll to discuss the plans for the garden in person, and much of what you see today was inspired by these early plans.  Overnight North Bovey (B)

Tuesday June 7: RHS Rosemoor

The final day of our tour takes us to north Dartmoor to the most beautiful and romantic of all Royal Horticultural Society gardens in England, Rosemoor. The garden was initially created by Lady Anne Palmer and later, when the garden was taken over by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1990, a master plan was produced by Elizabeth Banks Associates to develop the garden. Aptly, given its name, its rose garden alone includes over 2000 plants. Rosemoor is a public display garden offering examples of new and innovative planting using the widest possible variety of plants. Its summer Hot Garden is a perennial favourite. There are also fine examples of trees from around the world. in its arboretum. Our final night sees us gathering for a farewell dinner at an excellent local restaurant. Overnight North Bovey (B, D)

Wednesday June 8: Departure

This morning we travel by coach to Heathrow airport, where the tour ends. (B)