On the steep sides of the Helford River in Cornwall lie two famous gardens, as similar in style as the two halves of a 1920’s semi. The likeness is not so surprising when you discover that both were influenced by the same family at a crucial point in their development. The Foxes, a large, wealthy quaker dynasty, created at least six of Cornwall’s finest gardens. Being shipping agents, they were well placed to organise the transportation of thousands of new species to England. Their neighbouring gardens offered ideal conditions for plants from warm temperate regions of the world, with fine houses at their heads, warm valleys sheltered valleys in their midst and waves lapping at their feet. Their names were Glendurgan and Trebah.
When Trebah first opened to the public in 1987 it put the National Trust’s Glendurgan in the shade. Here was a ‘new’ garden being bravely rescued from an uncertain fate. There was no visitor centre, no smart guide book and little in the way of interpretation. Trebah was The Lost Gardens of Heligan before Tim Smit had even set his sights on rescuing them. It was an exciting and brave development on an otherwise established garden scene. Back then I was still in my teens and I loved Trebah for not being as stuffy as Glendurgan, which had been open to paying visitors for many years.
Fast forward to 2014 and Trebah has in many ways become as prim and proper as its neighbour. It is still a fine garden, full of fine plants, but has somehow lost its magic. It is not my style to be critical of gardens, the pleasure in which is such a personal thing, but in this instance I confess to being disappointed. The visitor centre, comprising a very good cafe and less praise-worthy gift shop, feels overly extravagant for a garden of this scale. Named the Hibbert Centre after Major Tony Hibbert, who donated the house and garden to the Trebah Garden Trust, the building cost over £1M to construct. However it’s Trebah’s branding that offends me the most. The garden’s logo, fashioned in an unpleasant combination of bright purple and emerald green, has been devised in a style I could only describe as ‘provincial leisure centre chic’. It is entirely at odds with the garden and one can only imagine that the designer must have been asked to come up with something ‘trendy’. Adding insult to injury, it is repeated continually on too many irrelevant and repetitive pieces of signage and interpretation. The National Trust must be wondering what drove their neighbour to put up the graphical equivalent of stone cladding.
Sadly, and I will be kind shortly, the garden trust’s latest project, a lofty amphitheatre, smacks of well-intentioned folly. Stark, hard-edged and miles from the carpark, one wonders how well this feature will be used and if the money might not have been more wisely employed elsewhere in the garden, or on a rebranding exercise. One hopes that appropriate planting, moss and lichen will quickly soften the granite blocks, but I still question the appeal of such a monument for the vast majority of regular visitors.
At this point I will get back to the plants, which is what this blog is all about. Entering the garden at the foot of the top terrace, visitors are greeted by a fine collection of mediterranean shrubs, agaves, aeoniums, echiums and other tender exotics. Notable among these are Kniphofia rooperi and Grevillea victoriae. These foreign imports appreciate the more open, well drained conditions found in this part of the garden and flourish outside all year round. The path winds up, past lush clumps of hydrangea and hedychium, to a crystal-clear koi pond fed by spring water and fringed with tree ferns.
The pond flows over into a narrow channel which feeds Trebah’s water garden, completed in 2010. This is an altogether more appropriate feature which blazes with primulas, zantedeschia and lysichiton in spring , mellowing to shady green as the year progresses. Pops of colour are introduced for autumn in the form of golden rudbeckias and Lobelia tupa. Venerable tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) are everywhere at Trebah, some having been planted as long ago as 1880 when Charles Fox took delivery of no less that 300 trunks shipped over from New South Wales.
From the water garden a path meanders through dense thickets of tree fern, giant rhubarb (Gunnera manicata) and bamboos to what must be one of the greatest swathes of mop-head hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) in the country. Again, I have to admit this feature is not particularly to my taste, the bumpy landscape created by the dumpy bushes adding up to a rather ill-defined and crude scene. Most visitors appear to love it, and during late summer it’s one of Trebah’s biggest attractions. I will temper my dismissiveness of the hydrangeas by praising another new feature, a Monet-style bridge over the Mallard Pond, which greatly improves the view of the garden from where it meets the sea at The Didi, back up to the house.
Trebah’s diminutive beach, affectionately know as ‘Yankee Beach’, has seen more action than most. During World War II, it was used by the 29th US Infantry Division, comprising some 7,500 men, to launch an assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy. The back of the beach remains concreted over from that time, but the views out into the Helford River and to the sea beyond are beautiful at any time of year.
I have been hard on Trebah, but I mean well and would still encourage you to visit. Here is a garden which has a remarkable history and a bright future, but which needs something other than expensive amphitheatres to recapture the raw magic it possessed 25 years ago. It’s time to take the stone cladding down and invest in a can or two of Farrow and Ball … you just need to look next door to see that I’m right.
Click here to visit Trebah’s website and experience that lovely logo first hand!
Categories: Cornish Gardens, Flowers, Foliage, Garden Design, Landscape Design, Large Gardens, Other People's Gardens, Trees and Shrubs
A most entertaining read. Off to look up the logo now…
Love that Koi pool and the water garden – divine, but oh my goodness, yes could resist sneaking a peak at that logo! It gave me the same expression as ‘them’ in the amphitheatre – what were they thinking.
On the website it is without its horrid background, so you have not seen the worst. Glad you liked the garden though 🙂
We used to visit Trebah Garden frequently when our children were younger. The journey down the valley to the beach and back up again was enough to tire them all out which, as every parent knows, is a great bonus at the end of the day! In fact, we visited loads of gardens when we went on holiday to Cormwall based solely on the fact that it was a great way to tire them out and they couldn’t destroy anything! Helen
I have a funny feeling my parents employed the same strategy. I was known to be especially unruly in a National Trust property, so the gardens were a much less risky environment!
My main memory of Trebah and many of the Cornish gardens is ‘what’s the obsession with the tropical look?’ Coming as I do from a climate where hardiness is not often an issue, it was the very lack of restraint in their lushness that bored me… too much like most gardens back home! Having said that, I have fond memories of the gunnera, and the massing of hydrangeas inspired the final thrust of my Beech Borders axis, where deep blue mopheads fill a cutting through a poplar thicket.
Looking at the Trebah website and ‘look’, I would say that their trustees would find your comment about ‘a map of a zoo’ a compliment. It is part of the dumbing down that happens when the purpose of a garden visit has more to do with children letting off steam than with hortiCULTURE. And, snobbish as I might be at heart, the sound of happy children in a garden is one of life’s great rewards, and often to me a measure of my success as a gardener.
I remember Trebah as a lovely natural garden which was returning to nature and was dismayed to see it’s manicured corporate transformation. It is not only the logo which offends, the website is a remarkable piece of bad taste.
I had been wondering whether we would revisit the great Cornish gardens, but it would probably be a mistake, I think I would be disappointed by the march of progress!
Yes, progress is inevitable, but these are venerable old gardens which will live through the vagaries of modern taste and will still be worth visiting in another 100 years. I hope you do still make your pilgrimage as there are so many lovely gardens to see in Cornwall.
I am thinking of visiting Cornwall next spring, so this information is very useful 🙂
Well, the last thing I’d want to do is put you off, as there are many gardens that are worth a visit, including Trebah. Most Cornish gardens peak in spring when the camellias, rhododendrons and magnolias are out. I hope you go 🙂
Thank you!
Quite a pity that your primary focus is on ‘the marketing’ at Trebah and entirely misses the point of the garden, which is exquisite. Who cares about ‘the branding’, when the whole experience of the visit is the personal enjoyment of the vistas, the valley, the mature trees and shrubs and the protected beach cove. As a bonus, the food is excellent. Your picture of ‘an anonymous couple’ sitting with sulky faces at the Amphitheatre was childlike and the assumption that it will not be popular is being parsimonious with the truth, or simply borne from ignorance, particularly when you consider the popularity of The Minack theatre. Any open air theatre with an attractive and natural backdrop will draw visitors, understandably, and the setting of Trebah Gardens is amongst the best. You criticise the distance of the Amphitheatre from the car park and here you miss the point again. Part of the enjoyment of the experience is to meander through the gardens to reach it, which is a similar experience to meandering through the gardens to reach the beach cove. You mention also that Glendurgan is it’s twin. No, it isn’t. The gardens are distinctly different as are many of the shrubs and trees and the beach at the bottom is external to the gardens at Glendurgan and not so private. The experiences of the two gardens are distinct in their differences. You will have grasped by now that I was least impressed with your write up about Trebah, not least of which because it was misrepresentative of the experience of a day out there and having trawled through many Cornish gardens, Trebah is amongst the best, if not the best as an all encompassing enjoyment of the natural elements and the backdrop of the waters edge. As an aside, if I buy a bottle of water, it’s because I’m thirsty, not because I ‘like the label’. Trebah Gardens is not ‘a logo’, it’s a garden and it’s a garden worth visiting more than most and despite being based in the Midlands, I try to visit there as often as I can. I recommend it wholeheartedly to all.
Gareth Roberts.
Thank you very much for taking the time to visit and comment Gareth. My blog is very much a reflection of my personal views and although I generally only make positive comments about the places I visit, in this instance I felt there was justification in taking a slightly different angle with my commentary. I understand that you feel I have missed the point of various aspects of Trebah, but since garden appreciation is such an individual thing I’d go as far to suggest we are both right, in so far as we see it. Of course Trebah is a great garden and I am happy it ranks in your (and many others’) top Cornish gardens, but I was disappointed on this occasion. It will certainly not stop me visiting again, I suspect many times before I shuffle off this mortal coil.