Echiums have gone bonkers in this Cornish garden, where a swimming pond is encircled by big-leaved plants
Forget tennis courts and croquet lawns – the latest garden must-have is a private swimming pond. This exciting example, sheltered by mature trees and tropical vegetation, is part of a meandering two-anda-half-acre garden in Cornwall that surprises at every turn. There’s an Italianate sunken garden, a fernery and battalions of Echium pininana providing blasts of summer colour against a backdrop of verdant foliage.
“The house was derelict and the garden overgrown when we moved here 15 years ago,” says owner Nick Williams. “There was nothing here save for a few mature Monterey pine trees that are at least 100 years old – planted by someone who, so the story goes, came down from Kew to plant them when the house was built, in 1927. For me, it was the proverbial blank canvas.
“Back then I was totally clueless about horticulture – it just didn’t interest me,” he continues. “I’m still not terribly knowledgeable, but I think what happened was, I alighted on the type of plants I like and branched out from there. You begin to see what will work in your garden and what won’t.”
It all began in 2013, when Nick and his wife Sara decided to have a swimming pond installed. “I’d always wanted it to look very tropical, surrounded by abundant trees and shrubs,” he says. “So, I began planting around the periphery. When the plants began to flourish, I got interested in them, and became quite obsessed.” Nick gained inspiration from his local plant nurseries, Trevena Cross at Helston and Hayle Plants at Treglisson.He invested in hardy exotics such as Trachycarpus fortunei (Chusan palm), phyllostachys bamboos and Fatsia japonica, as well as more borderline hardy plants, Pseudopanax laetus, bottle-brush-flowered callistemon and Melianthus major. “The advantage I had was that I didn’t have the burden of knowledge, so I could just go round and pick whatever I liked.”
Big-leaved, architectural plants held a particular fascination, such as Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Rex’, the Chinese rice paper plant. “It’s semi-evergreen so the leaves only drop right in the dead of winter,” explains Nick. “But already by the e
