It has always been our dream to ‘retire’ to Cornwall and develop a garden with a nursery open to the public.  Eventually after much searching we moved here in November 1999 with a thousand plants and a 10ft X 10ft greenhouse in a large removal van.  This had to park a mile up the lane to unload, and all our possessions were delivered in small loads.

The property is a barn conversion that needed extensive works before we could open.  We had the builders in for over a year, but they just finished in time for opening at Easter 2001. 

The nursery and garden have now taking shape after much hard work. The apartments and nursery are run single handed by me with some help in the garden. I specialise in cultivating perennials for sale, which can be seen growing in the garden. It is not a typical Cornish garden with rhododendrons and camellias, although I have developed a woodland garden in one area with various trees and shrubs. I propagate many of the plants for sale in the nursery from my garden and although I have limited stock it should be interesting. The garden is well labelled and visitors are welcome to walk around all areas. There is a Tea Hut next to the Sales area, where you can serve yourself tea/coffee with home made cakes. There is also a toilet and picnic tables.

Hidden Valley Gardens Newsletter, Christmas 2011

It has been a good growing season here in Cornwall.  Apart from April, when it was hot and dry, we had just enough rain for the plants to thrive and not too much to keep the visitors away.

It was also a bumper year for fruit and berries after the hard winter, but mild spring with no frost in April. Our fruit trees really got into their stride and presented us with loads of gages, plums and apples. Some of the excess apples have gone away to make us some apple juice and cider. But we only had a few cherries despite thousands on the trees – we had some very fat birds in the garden!  We have a eight year old walnut tree. Last year we were thinking of giving it the ‘cut’ but it heard about it and produced one walnut.  This year we had well over 100 walnuts! We tried pumpkins for the first time and put two plants on top of an old compost heap and left them to their own devices - we were rewarded with 21 large pumpkins and we are still eating pumpkin soup! Even the holly trees in the surrounding countryside are covered in berries for Christmas and the bryony berries are like orange necklaces hanging in the hedge rows.

We were both 65yrs in November and, although we are getting a bit creaky, we hope to keep gardening for a number of years with support from our helpers. In my case with help from my osteopath! 

Now my husband Peter has finally retired he does my marketing and public relations in an enthusiastic way, which has made a real difference to the visitor numbers and plant sales both of which have increased. This year the garden won the Cornwall Tourism ‘Bronze’ award for the “Small Tourist Attraction” category (there are no ‘garden’ only category). As we were away on our winter break some of our ‘helpers’ went to the award ceremony at St Mellion International Hotel and Golf Club to collect it for us (see photo above)

Last winter, I started a new bed for early spring interest by clearing some old shrubs away (see photo). We have put in several Acer palmatums, under-planted with small bulbs including many named snowdrops, which I have been collecting. There are also hellebores and different forms of primroses and pulmonaria. I am greatly looking forward to seeing all the flowers this spring.

Another project this year has been to make a water feature at the end of the plant sales area for shade loving plants. We had to get rid of some ugly redundant plastic water tanks first and enlarge the wooden shade canopy.  A semi circular raised pond was then constructed with a back wall containing a gargoyle which spouts water with the help of a solar pump. All the water initially comes from the house roof. I hope to display some water iris here and perhaps sell some water plants.

In addition to the plant variety and colour from the various themed gardens within the garden, the display/propagation collection rows again produced a mass of colour through the summer and into the autumn.  The dahlia collection has become a firm favourite with the visitors with many studying them in great detail.

We have a lot of German visitors in Cornwall and at our garden because of the popularity of the Rosamunde Pilcher novels, which are romantic stories set in Cornwall. There are film versions of the novels on German television. While in Cornwall the German tourists like to visit gardens and a Cornwall garden guide is now being written in German and we hope to be featured in this.  Marianne Majerus (International Garden Photographer of the Year, 2010) stayed with us overnight in the summer to take some photographs of the garden in the early morning for this book. We may have more German visitors in the future!  We also had some filming commissioned by Visit Cornwall under the theme ‘Big & Small’ – the garden section part of the film is Heligan and us.  One of our regular visitors was particularly excited to become a ‘film star’. Look out for the results, coming soon on www.visitcornwall.co.uk

As well as our perennials, we always grow some annuals as fillers.  This year we grew mallow (Lavatera trimestris) in white, it really is easy and makes a lovely show, the pink form ‘Silver Cup’ is also very good. Another annual we would not be without is Cosmos bipinnatus, which has fine ferny leaves and dainty open flowers in many shades of pink or white. Both these annuals flower for a very long season.

Unfortunately our neighbours Escallonia hedge along our entrance drive has died and it looks such a mess, also full of bind weed and ivy. Escallonia can be short lived, especially in wet soil, so, as a joint effort with our neighbours; it is being replaced with beech over the winter. It will look great in the future, but it is quite a job as it is 150ft long.

We were lucky with the weather for our National Garden Scheme three open days in August and raised more than a thousand pounds. The visitors kept me very busy making and serving cream teas and cakes. Because we had so many people on the Sunday, we have decided to open on Monday 13^th, Tue 14^th, and Wed 15^th August 2012 in the hope this will spread the visitors out more evenly. Another busy time was the Daphne du Maurier Festival in May. In 2012 (10 days from 10^th to 19^th May) we will also serve cream teas.  (At other times we still have our self service tea hut with home-made cakes but remember, apart from the special events, we close on Tues/Weds so we can go out!!)

 I hope you have a great 2012, and happy gardening. 

 Tricia Howard Dec 2011

Click here for our 2012 plant sales list