Book reviews, the crossword and Alice Vincent
Frost-covered PENNISETUM 'Fairy Tails', one of the grasses recommended in Tony Hall’s GARDENING WITH WINTER PLANTS, reviewed on page 100.
SECRET GARDENS OF CORNWALL: A PRIVATE TOUR by Tim Hubbard, photographs by Jo and Rob Whitworth
Frances Lincoln, £22 ISBN 978-0711281493
A glorious ode to Cornwall’s most loved gardens and little-known gems; with images that capture the haunting beauty of this weather-beaten county.
Reviewer Natalie Ashbee is a garden writer, producer and editor. I eagerly anticipated this book, having loved others in the series. And since I now share the same west Cornwall landscape as the author, Tim Hubbard, I was a little apprehensive as to whether it would disappoint. It didn’t.
Exciting, interesting and intriguing; I gorged on this inspirational book in a couple of days and, considering I live in Cornwall and know many of these gardens well, from filming in them or from my own garden explorations, I can’t praise Hubbard enough for evoking the essence of these Cornish gems. The stories of the gardens and, essentially, the people who live in and garden them, are brought to life with a sense of drama and evocation rarely found in a garden tour guide.
Cornwall’s history can be told through its homes; every tale worthy of a Daphne du Maurier novel. Hubbard shares the gardens of wealthy tin mine owners and of shipping merchants such as the Fox family, whose ventures abroad brought us the treasures that now fill gardens such as Trebah, and Enys on the Falmouth coastline. He shares the story of Barbara Hepworth, who fled London to escape the war and created her garden in the light-filled, artists’ paradise at St Ives. Scattered among cliffside spectaculars such as St Michael’s Mount and the Minack Theatre are a secret rose garden at Land’s End and a garden led by phases of the moon.
Cornwall’s nurseries have long held the esteem of horticulturists around the world, with Treseders and Burncoose still trading, and what became clear through reading the book is that gardens intrinsically link the oldest families of Cornwall. But these gardens, and their owners, are not sitting on their laurels. They are grafters, innovators who are looking to the future, planting for climate change and in spite of the winds and desiccating sun that makes gardening a battle in many of these amazing spaces, they lean into the wind, tip their hats and dig in. These are tough spaces, gardened by tough gardeners.
GARDENING WITH W
