| I've been busy wih famiy since the end of July and had little time for being in my garden. The dry hot summer continued well into August and the ground was parched. The early summer flowers wilted and were not replaced and the garden seemed to go into a state of hot hibernation. We had our family holiday in Cornwall in early September and I came back inspired by the things I had seen. Firstly, we stayed in an old granite house in Portreath and the back garden ran up a ravine with a little stream which ran under the house - there was always the sound of running water. The owners had over 40 years cultivated a wilderness with a great variety of plants aided by the mild climate. Nearby walks on the cliffs provided a landscape dominated by gorse, heather and bracken and dry stone walls colonised with plants. We visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the wonderful 'sub-tropical' garden and the Eden project with its biodomes filled with tropical and mediterannean plants. | All provided wonderful ideas and inspirations for future gardening projects. |
But my most enjoyable experience was on the beach pottering around the rock pools with my daughter and watching the tide submerge and reclaim them. The deep crystal clear pools, on the north side of the beach at Portreath by the harbour wall, were ful of life - darting blennies, sea squirts, numerous varieties of seaweed, molluscs and other shell fish. Tide dependent rock pools are habitats that a gardener cannot create. But then I learnt that several of the pools had been carved out of the rocks to prvide a bathing place for Lady Bassett!!
RSS Feed