An exhilarating Cornish garden that sits between the sky and the sea
Sometimes you know that you have arrived at an enchanting garden as soon as you reach the garden gate. One of the most alluring garden gates I know is set into a granite wall so entirely quilted with the tiny daisy Erigeron karvinskianus that the only visible stone is one that has been cleared and painted with the garden name, Chygurno. On the other side of this deliciously hazy entrance is a second delight: the wall here is dancing with circular mint-green aeoniums, some the size of a fingernail, others the size of a dinner plate. They give the stretch of pink-grey granite the neat, playful feel of a 1960s fabric. This is the wild and exposed southwest tip of Cornwall, and this magically choreographed planting is not at all what you might expect.
Make your way down a flight of steps - overspilling with red-flushed crocosmia and cheerfully encroaching Japanese anemones - and you will gasp again. Here is the glittering sea at the rugged base of an almost cliff-like drop down to Lamorna Cove, and here are the dazzling shafts of sunlight making a gloriously Mediterranean silhouette of the Monterey pine. When the sun catches the plumes of pampas grass scattered across the slope, they shimmer white and glamorous among backlit fan palms and the spiny leaves of Agave americana.
'We saw Chygurno for only five minutes before we bought it,' says Dr Robert Moule. 'It was getting dark and the garden was so overgrown that you couldn't even see the sea. But we knew we had found what we were looking for.' Around 25 years ago, he and his wife Carol began an almost nationwide search for a large garden by the sea, both as a creative project for their retirement and as a home for a collection of species rhododendrons from their Cheshire garden. Eventually, they heard that a cottage with three acres of land, empty for 20 years, was for sale but 'almost impossible to buy', Robert remembers.
'It was all faith - we just persisted,' he says, as he describes the day in 1998, when the couple drove down to meet the vendor and collect the keys at the Queens Hotel in Penzance. "This was our first proper chance to look around,' he continues. It was only then that they fully understood the house was on a hill and that the garden dropped almost vertically in places to the shore. 'But we had gardened before and we just set about clearing the site - we had a lot of bonfires,' he recalls.
As the view down to the sea was revealed, they realised, says Robert, that there wasn't a flat piece of land to sit and look out. So building a terrace in the sheltered embrace of a new conservatory became a priority. As the Moules learned more about the history of the house (it was built in 1908 for two women who invited fellow suffragettes to recover there after hunger striking in prison), they uncovered the bones of the plot: two paths leading down to the sea and a path running across. They also uncovered huge boulders and outcrops of granite that, he says, 'stopped you in your tracks and dictated the ways smaller paths and flights of steps were added over time.
'We had a lot of help for the first two or three years that we were here, including an expert Cornish hedger to restore the walls,' Robert recalls. The couple concentrated on creating terraces in the upper part of the garden, always recycling materials from the site. Beds were edged with stone found in the garden, and granite window mullions salvaged from the former workhouse at nearby Madron were split into sills and steps. With no possibility of using a wheelbarrow, tons of chippings for paths had to be sent down to lower parts of the garden using pipes taped together to form a chute.
At last, with only bamboos, hydrangeas and the sculptural Monterey pines remaining, the couple were able to plant wherever there were suitable pockets in the thin, free-draining soil. Some early mistakes were perhaps inevitable - including positioning their beloved rhododendrons in the upper part of the garden, only to see their leaves shredded by the brutal salt-laden wind. They planted 'too big' and saw plants being ‘literally carried off’ by powerful gusts, and lost a host of exotic grevilleas and proteas one winter, when the usually mild temperatures suddenly dropped to -9°C.
But then came the successes. The astounding front wall 'began as three small pots of erigeron', says Robert, who remembers a passer-by announcing; 'You'll regret planting those.' The exquisite aeonium wall came to life by 'bashing a flower head against the stone and pushing the seeds into the cracks'. There is a wonderful photograph of Carol planting the first tree fern that came in a two-litre pot. These now form tantalising groves, which tower above your head and are key to the feeling that this is a garden to lose yourself in.
Dangling bright cerise fuchsias line the path as you explore further. There are craggy, windblown haw thorns and luminous stands of the native fern Blechnum spicant with ladder-like fronds that are a fresh pea green when new, and bronzy-brown as they age. There are shimmering, wiry grasses and gorgeous stretches of silvery-grey Celmisia semicordata, the New Zealand daisy, like a tiny, repeating astelia. As you squeeze through a gap in the bamboo, the next view is always pulling you on: a boulder erupting with huge scalloped leaves of Bergenia ciliata; a dazzling red hot poker; a shaggy Cordyline australis outlined against the sky.
Despite years of painstaking work, the Moules' patient and intuitive enthusiasm remains undiminished. 'It's the intensity of the light and the blue and sparkle of the sea,' says Carol. 'We never tire of it.' From an almost impossible plot, a richly textured, breathtakingly lovely garden has been brought to life.
The gardens of Chygurno, Lamorna, Penzance TR19 6XH (01736 732153; rmoule010@btinternet.com) are open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 2-5pm, April-September; and also on selected days for the National Garden Scheme.
Richard Bloom1/12The terrace has spectacular views down to Lamorna Cove across the steeply sloping site, past a rugged Monterey pine and shaggy cordylines at the top of the garden. Short flights of granite steps link to gravel paths between textured planting that includes pampas grass, phormiums, Chusan palms and several agaves
Richard Bloom2/12Erigeron karvinskianus smothers the granite wall by the entrance to the garden
Richard Bloom3/12Yucca filamentosa is a bold backdrop for Gazania ‘Bicton Orange’
Richard Bloom4/12Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert', Aconium 'Zwartkop' and Osteospermum jucundum thrive at the top of the terrace
Richard Bloom5/12Mosses and succulents, including the flat Aeonium tabulaeforme, grow in the cracks of the granite wall, creating a distinctive display
Richard Bloom6/12Sunlight illuminates fiery crocosmia, a Chusan palm and white Japanese anemones edging the top terrace.
Richard Bloom7/12One of the many towering tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) in the lower part of the garden
Richard Bloom8/12Paths zigzag up and down the garden, their routes dictated by huge outcrops of granite. Orange Begonia sutherlandi brightens the moss-covered rock beside a wooden seat
Richard Bloom9/12Frothy Erigeron karvinskianus and pink osteospermum soften the steps by the terrace, where spiky Trachycarpus fortunei and swathes of crocosmia are set off by white Japanese anemones and dark aeoniums
Richard Bloom10/12The crimson bromeliad Fascicularia bicolor blazes from a hole in a sycamore tree.
Richard Bloom11/12Steps faced with cleft chestnut wind past Blechnum spicant ferns that thrive in the shade of Dicksonia antarctica
Richard Bloom12/12Huge pale plumes of pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) catch the eye among the richly textured planting on the side of the valley that slopes down to the sea. Low mounds of Hebe diosmifolia provide a foil for a host of plants including bright green ferns, spidery red phormiums and hydrangeas with soft pink and bright blue blooms
