Around Penjerrick Garden

When the author of Secret Gardens of Cornwall: A Private Tour, Tim Hubbard, asked the audience who had heard of his favourite garden in Cornwall, Penjerrick Garden (this was at a talk given as part of the Redruth Literary Festival), only a handful of people put their hands up (including myself and Helen). When Tim asked the audience who had been there – well, only myself and Helen put our hands up.

If none of the gardens featured in the book are actually secret (at least, they’re not anymore), Penjerrick is the least well-known. This is because – and this will put off 99.9% of people – it has no car park, no cafe, no shop, no toilet, no proper paths, no disabled access, no wayfinding signs; in short, no facilities at all. What has it got, you may be asking. Well, it’s a wonderfully wild and overgrown garden just a few miles away from Falmouth, but feels like another world.

When I first visited, in April (pictured, above; and when I returned in August, below), the gunnera was starting to grow and it indeed looked like a triffid beamed down to earth to cause havoc; unfortunately not altogether untrue as the Government has classified the plant as invasive and non-native. It still seems to grow all over Cornwall and quite wonderful to witness it grow from tiny shoots to over four metres in height in summer.

As its website points out, Penjerrick is a 15-acre, subtropical garden created some 200 years ago by geologist and mining expert Robert Were Fox. Aside from forests of gunnera growing around four ponds, there are fern trees, bamboo, rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas. The lower part of the garden, accessed via a wooden bridge, is darker and denser. The garden is apparently referred to as “Cornwall’s true jungle garden”.

Of interest is the skeleton of a brain coral (above), bought to Penjerrick by the captain of the Beagle (yes, Darwin’s Beagle). It’s quite hard to find and naturally there’s no sign or information about it.