Lost Gardens of Heligan

The gardens of Heligan developed over 150 years through 4 generations of the Tremayne family. John Hearle Tremayne began the great Heligan tradition of collecting new and unusual specimen plants. Among the many plants that John Hearle added to the garden, the most famous was probably Cornus capitata, first cultivated at Heligan. Sir Anthony Buller had been on an expedition in Nepal where he collected seed from the lower slopes of the Himalayas, which he gave to John Hearle Tremayne in 1825.

Through John Hearle Tremayne’s marriage to Caroline, brother of Sir Charles Lemon (a familiar of JD Hooker), the stunning Hooker Rhododendrons came into the Heligan collections. The most magnificent of all the plants in the collection (in my opinion) are the absolutely massive tree Rhododendrons (R. arboreum and R. falconeri).

John Hearle’s son John continued growing Heligan during the great Victorian Imperial period of plant exploration and introduction. By the time of John’s death in 1901, he had contributed many plantings to the garden including the Tree Ferns, distributed by Treseders in the 1890’s, and the Trachycarpus palms.

John’s son Jack returned from Italy in 1891 to continue his father’s work at Heligan. Jack had an artistic nature, and was a very talented architect and plantsman. He designed “the jungle” and the “the ravine,” and created the Italian Garden where he introduced many new exotics including Chinese gooseberry (Actinidia chinenesis, an EH Wilson introduction from Veitch), The Pocket Handkerchief Tree (Davidia involucrata), and Magnolia delavayi.

Jack moved out of Heligan during the Great War when it was used as a military convalescent hospital. Upon returning to Heligan, he soon couldn’t live with “the ghosts” that haunted the gardens. Tragically, so many of the gardeners had lost their life during the war that Jack could not live with the sadness, and so returned to Italy. The gardens began a slow period of decline until Tim Smit (creator of the Eden Project) discovered the property in 1990, and began the amazing process of restoration.

Most of the impressive plants at Heligan resulted from the Tremayne’s patronage of the House of Veitch (Royal Exotic Nursery) and Treseder family. The Veitch’s entrepreneurial spirit led them to invest in many of the greatest plant collectors of all time. During the Veitch’s reign of the horticultural industry, they invested in 22 plant collectors including the Cornish Lobb brothers, Richard Pearce, and EH Wilson.

Some of my favorite large plants at Heligan include: Cornus capitata, Crinodendron hookerianum, Davidia involuctrata, Dicksonia antarctica, Drimys winteri, Eucryphia cordifolia, Hoheria sexstylosa, Magnolia campbellii, Magnolia delavayi, Podocarpus totara, Pseudotsuga menziesii (and its HUGE witch’s broom), Rhododendron arboreum, Rhododendron falconeri, Rhododendron niveum, Sequoiadendron giganteum, Plagianthus betulinus (or P. regius).

And that is just the short list! What an amazing garden.