The Lost Gardens of Heligan were another one of my must sees in Cornwall, after I’d run into a couple television shows about the gardens. The very basic back story: the garden staff all volunteered to go off and fight in WWI, and unfortunately, as in many other places, they didn’t come back. Fast forward to the 1990s, and a group decided to restore the gardens. There are before and after pictures all over the place, and it really is staggering how much work they’ve done.
The other cool thing about this place is that it’s a working walled kitchen garden. These are associated with the great houses, where they came up with ways to keep the families in fresh produce for the whole year. There are neat little features like pineapple houses, and larger green houses for citrus trees or peaches. Again, having seen a television show about restoring one, I was really interested to actually see one in action.