CHS TOUR 2021 to CORNWALL
In Association with BOXWOOD TOURS
28th September – 1st October 2021
Exotic Gardens of the Cornish Riviera: a Garden Tour hosted by Kirsty Fergusson
Click here for a Flikr Album of photos from members on the tour.
We were delighted to be travelling with Kirsty again and that Boxwood tours could postpone this year’s trip for a year. Kirsty took us to Normandy in 2018, where we discovered that she is also a Cornwall expert and wrote Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly for Bradt Slow Travel Guides.
The Cornish peninsula is famous for sheltered woodland gardens harbouring important collections of magnolias, camellias, rhododendrons, palms, tree ferns plus many other exotic plant groups that continue the flowering season through the year. Most of the gardens are found to the south of the peninsula where valley gardens lead down to secluded creeks warmed by the Gulf Stream. The wonder and magnificence of Cornish gardens is made possible by this unique microclimate as well as by the prosperity of estates established in the 17th century funded by local tin-mining and porcelain production. This all coincided with the arrival into Britain of large quantities of exciting new plant specimens collected by botanists travelling to the far-flung regions of the world. To immerse yourself in the splendour of these outstanding woodland gardens, stout footwear and the capability to walk around expansive gardens are required. We stay at the award-winning St Michaels Resort Hotel, Falmouth. Click to Download a Boxwood_Booking_Form
MEMBERS’ PLANTS FROM PAST TOURS
Kay Edwards
I visited Le Jardin Agapanthe in Grigneuseville, Normandy in September 2018, with a group of CHS members. These agapanthus ‘Northern Star’, growing happily now in West Wales, remind me of that fascinating garden.
Barb White
Surprise Tiger lilies from scratch.
Thought I’d send you the results of the bulblets that were given to us and many members by Jean Louis Dantec of L’Etang De Launay on our Normandy trip with the CHS in 2018. Did anyone else plant theirs? Tiger lilly, I think.
Philip Ellis reports that none came up from his batch: Barbara is lucky/greener-fingered!
Judith Bray
Guernsey Lilies?
I photographed these on our trip to Guernsey in Autumn 2004, assuming that they were Guernsey Lilies (Nerine sarniensis). However when I checked in my RHS Encyclopedia, they were the wrong colour and more likely to be Nerine bowdenii ‘Pink’. Oh well, what’s in a name – they were very pretty anyway.
Kay Edwards: Coreopsis ‘Full Moon’
Le Jardin Plume Normandy 2018
I was captivated by Coreopsis ‘Full Moon’ in Le Jardin Plume when the CHS visited Normandy in September 2018. It was flowering profusely all along the base of a dark wooden barn and I bought three plants from their nursery. I hope, in time, to create a similar effect here at home.
Kay Edwards
Rose in Memory of John Corfield.
During our CHS visit to Milntown, Isle of Man, John and I came across a fragrant rose we did not recognise, in the sheltered walled garden, still in full bloom in September. A gardener identified it as ‘Wild Edric’ a David Austin rose, named after a Shropshire Lord. I told John I would grow one… and here it is, flowering for the first time on my exposed Welsh hillside.
We are looking for plants from our past tours to fill this empty pot. They may have been a generous handful of distributed propagating material like Barbara’s lily bulblets, purchased from a special garden – or sourced after the bus has gone wild with excitement after spotting something new.