Glorious Cornish gardens

THIRTY years ago this summer a group of Cornish garden owners and head gardeners got together in Tresco Abbey Gardens on the Isles of Scilly. But they weren’t there just to admire the fabulously exotic planting.

- Cornwall-based garden writer and former BBC presenter and journalist TIM HUBBARD

From their meeting came the formal founding of what had been a seed of an idea conceived a few months earlier. It's since grown and blossomed into one of the most successful - and certainly unique - garden organisations in the UK. The Great Gardens of Cornwall was born in that summer of 1995 and these days is made up of 14 gardens scattered right across Cornwall - from Antony Woodland Garden in the east with its views over the busy Tamar river to the Plymouth skyline, as far as Tresco in the west, bathed by the Mexican Gulf Stream as its warm(ish) waters lap the crystal beaches.

But what makes a ‘Great’ Garden? The long standing chairman of The Great Gardens of Cornwall is Charles Williams. He explains that new memberships are determined entirely by the votes of existing members: “That's why the current membership of 14 gardens have such a remarkable diversity of different types of garden to offer to their visitors’.

The diversity of these gardens is celebrated in my new book. Five years ago I was delighted to be asked to write a book marking the 25th birthday of ‘the great gardens’. Gardens are constantly evolving of course, so now, for the 30th anniversary, I've had the chance to not only revisit some old favourites to see how they've changed but also to discover two new gardens which have recently been accepted into the group.

One of the two new great gardens is the Minack Theatre Garden. Of course many people know the cliffside theatre in the far west of Cornwall but maybe not quite so many realise the importance of its garden. Rowena Cade, the founder of the Minack, originally built her stage and seating within her own garden, and now the setting of the theatre surrounded by extraordinary planting makes a visit even more special.

Joint head gardeners are Claire Batten and Jeff Rowe; Jeff's favourite plants are Proteaceae which includes banksia, grevillea, leucadendron and the rare and tender King Protea.