Glendurgen & Trebah Gardens

Glendurgen and Trebah Gardens are right round the coast near Falmouth but are located within just a few hundred metres of each other so it possible to visit them both on the same day, although both have enough to do in them to last all day.

Glendurgen is a National Trust property so can be entered for free if you are a member. Alternatively, if you have your Great Gardens of Cornwall leaflet stamped you can get a few pounds off the entrance fee. Again there are trails for the children to follow but there are other attractions within the garden to keep children amused too. The most obvious of these is the hedge maze in the middle of the garden. Not only is this a very attractive feature, it is an irresistible lure for children to pit their wits against. It isn’t at all easy to find your way to the centre but it is achievable – just don’t attempt it if you are in a rush!

In April the rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias make a dazzling display of colours and are simply beautiful, along with the primroses, anemones and irises at ground level. Follow the garden along any path and you will inevitably work your way downhill to Durgen Village and through that to a small beach along the shore of the Helston River. This is a great place to skim some stones or stop for refreshments.

From here the only way is up and you work your way back through the garden along a different path but with numerous benches dotting around the site it is easy to find a spot to rest and appreciate the view. Finally the path will lead back to the gift shop, plant sale and tea room at the head of the garden where you can look back down through the impressive planting to the view one last time.

Being in such close proximity of Glendurgen and Trebah gardens, it is hardly surprising that there is a very similar feel to the two gardens. Both run down gorges to beaches at the bottom and have similar planting. That said, don’t think that visiting one means it isn’t worth visiting the other because they are both so beautiful and worth seeing. Trebah has won best garden for the last couple of years and it is one of my most favourite places in the country.

Trebah Garden is privately owned but has a fairly reasonable entrance fee, particularly as children get in for only £3 each. The Great Gardens of Cornwall leaflet gets a pound off each paying adult price so is worth using.

Trebah is famous for its hydrangea garden, which looks amazing in the summer when in full colour. In spring there is little evidence of this garden but this matters little with your eye being constantly caught by the beautiful reds and pinks of the rhododendrons and camellias.  In contrast to Glendurgen, Trebah has a closer density of planting, which leads to a more jungly feel. I particularly like the Koi Pond and the Water Garden, with a reel running downhill to the equally stunning “Bamboozal” bamboo garden. With bamboo only really featuring in my garden to hold up bean plants, it is lovely to see them growing, to see the different varieties and to appreciate their amazing rates of growth.

The gunneras are also a site to behold. In the summer their enormous leaves are completely unfurled and fill the valley but in April they are just beginning to grow. Their leaves have a vibrant lime green tinge in spring and have weird, alien looking flowers and vicious spiky stems and they look so other-world-like that I find it hard to take my eyes off them.

The private beach at the bottom of the garden is a delightful place for a change of scenery and maybe a spot of afternoon tea too. We paused here for ice-creams before my girls borrowed buckets and spades from those on loan from the tea room and went and dug in the gravely sand. Then it was time to wind our way back up the hill, through the camellias and home. 

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

I have visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan several times since it opened in the late nineties and have visited at different times of the year including February, April and August. There is certainly something to see all year round but I admit it was least interesting in the winter and most crowded in August. I never tire of the place and enjoy the mix of different gardens, the history behind it and its long established look. Reading the information panels that can be found all round the garden and seeing the before and after pictures is amazing and you come to realise that no matter how weedy your garden becomes you can always bring it back from the brink. I can’t imagine standing in the lost garden and thinking, right, best make a start then. There has been such an enormous amount of effort put into rediscovering this garden and recreating the old as well as seamlessly adding new improvement to it.

The entrance fee for a family ticket is £30 so it well worth using the 25% off leaflet that you can pick up at The Eden project as this takes £7.50 off the price, which is enough to fund a box of souvenir biscuits from the gift shop! Children get given a little compass and a map or trail upon entering and they can amuse themselves looking out for all the different things to tick off the trail. Even without the trail there are plenty of interesting nooks and crannies to explore so children are unlikely to get bored.

There is no set route around the garden and no obvious way of exploring it in an order that will allow you to take everything in without some degree of retracing your steps. We usually start with the kitchen garden because this is something we are particularly interested in. It’s nice to compare what they have planted out with what we have growing to make sure we are on track. Off this garden is a courtyard with a melon house and pineapple pits where, historically, more exotic plants were grown. Then there are a maze of walled gardens set out with different looks and purposes and I admit I am always jealous of their peach growing greenhouses.

Beyond the walled gardens are some more rugged nocks; a crystal grotto, a ravine and well. Then off to a part of the garden with a lean towards the animal lover with dovecotes, poultry and wildlife hid. At the bottom of the garden is the lost valley which is pretty much just a walk through a country lane along a river but it is peaceful and a nice place to stroll with the family.

Our favourite part of the garden is the Jungle Garden. This is a spectacular loop of boardwalks and bridges working their way down from the house in a narrow gorge. It is densely planted with a whole host of exotic plants – bananas, giant redwood, bamboo, tree ferns, gunnera, rhododendrons, canna lilies and camellias – that work perfectly to create a jungle feel. Not only can you stand amongst it and wonder what country you might be in but also which geological era, for it has a feeling that maybe a dinosaur might just come crashing out of the undergrowth at any minute.

Finally, the woodland walk back to the gift shop takes you past The Grey Lady, Mud Maiden and Giant sculptures and the Giant Adventure Trail so even as your feet ache and your energy is waning there is something to keep you amused.

The Eden Project

As someone who loves gardening, it may seem a bit of a busman’s holiday to visit gardens when I go on holiday but I enjoy nothing more than walking around someone else’s hard work, appreciating the beauty of human orchestrated nature. There are many beautiful gardens all over the Britain but some of my favourite can be found in Cornwall so a Cornish break this Easter holiday was the ideal time to re-visit them. In this blog post and the ones to follow, I review 6 very different ones. If you too love beautiful gardens you may like to consider a holiday in Cornwall in order to pay them a visit. If so, then some of the best can be found within easy driving distance of St Austell.

The Eden Project

Located very close to St Austell, The Eden Project is almost a garden theme park, with the layout, appearance and crowd management feel similar to other theme-park attractions, and very much a man-made tourist hotspot. Created during the late 1990s and opened in the early 21st century, it is a relatively new garden yet now looks well established, if somewhat lacking in genuine historical interest.

In the spring the parking isn’t too bad but driving past acres of parking spaces gives you some appreciation of how busy this place gets in the summer holidays. Indeed, the first time I visited this place was a year or two after it had first opened when it wasn’t as famous or as popular as it is now, and we spent about an hour and half queuing in the car just to get into the car park. I can only hope that they have improved the car parking organisation since then but even so it is something worth considering. I would question too whether there is much more to be gained from the garden itself by visiting in the height of summer when the main feature of the place is two climatically controlled greenhouses that are somewhat removed of seasons anyway.

On this visit we set off on an unpromising, foggy and drizzly day which again may have helped to keep the visitor numbers down. We reasoned that, with spending most of our time inside the greenhouses, it wouldn’t much matter what the weather outside was doing. However, we were fortunate in that the weather improved shortly after our arrival and I have to confess that brighter, drier conditions made for better photography and a more pleasant day out.

It is expensive to get into The Eden Project, costing £68 for a family of 4 if you pay on the gate. You can get that down to £57 if you book online in advance or if you pick up a discount voucher leaflet from a tourist information office or stand. The gift shop and food and drink places have top end prices too. The Eden Project is a charity and you have to bear that in mind but it does feel like a money spinning enterprise and a tourist attraction for the well-off. On the plus side, the entrance fee gets you a year’s membership and you can revisit the place as many times as you like within the next year without paying again. Probably quite handy if you leave nearby. The Eden Project has close ties to The Lost Gardens of Heligan so if you are planning to also visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan then look out for a leaflet at the Eden Project ticket desks that entitles you to 25% of your Heligan entrance fee. Also, on your way out of the gift shop, browse the leaflet stand and see if you can find one on Cornwall’s Greatest Gardens as you can gain a reduction in the entrance fee to other gardens by getting this leaflet stamped.

The famous points of interest at The Eden Project are of course the two enormous multi-domed greenhouses, looking like they have been constructed out of some weird sort of bubblewrap. The right hand one is set for temperate, or Mediterranean, climatic conditions and the, larger, left hand one is a tropical zone. Both are accessed via a central link, which also contains toilets and several food serving areas.

The temperate greenhouse is set out in a series of different countries so as you walk round you can be visiting California one minute and effortlessly stroll into north Africa a moment later without even a hint of jetlag. I’m, of course, particularly interested in the edible crops they grow and enjoyed seeing oranges, agave, figs, and chillies. I particularly liked their chilli trolley, providing information on the heat of each variety of chilli.

Having said that, the flowers are delightful too and particularly attractive to photograph. The trickiest part of this is trying to get a decent photograph without a person in the way or an annoying plant label. In April the tulip planting is particularly spectacular and you may like to make a note (from one of those annoying plant labels!) of you favourite so you can see about growing your own.

The tropical greenhouse is hot and humid and this hits you from the moment you walk through the door and it just keeps getting hotter the further you walk in. There are several water fountains dotted about and a cool room near the top should you be feeling particularly desperate but expect to feel sweaty by the time you are done and extremely grateful to get back out into the good old British weather! Again, I enjoyed seeing the edible plants and the tropical crops that we are so used to eating but not so used to seeing growing.  There is also an impressive array of beautiful leaves and it all comes together into a jungle of mind-blowing proportions considering it is all grown inside in an ex-quarry in Cornwall. By the time you get to the top walkway you are able to look down on the canopy in a way that most people would otherwise never experience.

Although the greenhouses are definitely the main feature, there is an outside garden worth strolling round too. In April the daffodils were looking particularly impressive but this garden I guess changes considerably with time of year. 

What wouldn’t change so quickly are the quirky works of art dotted around the site; an enormous bee, an interesting fence, a man, the “industrial plant”, the global warming greenhouse, and the maiden with the disco ball face, as my daughter called her. Having explored thoroughly by foot, why not take the land train back up the sides of what once was a china clay quarry to the gift shop before trekking back to your car.

Lamb for Easter?

Roast lamb has long been a traditional food served up at Easter, thought to represent Christ as the lamb of God. Ironically, British lamb is far from being at its best at this time of year. Indeed, Easter often falls within the lambing season when lambs are just being born, rather than being big enough for slaughter. As a result, much of what is on offer in the shops is New Zealand lamb instead, their season being 6 months ahead of (or behind?) ours. These lambs are grass fed, slaughtered then shipped over in chilled containers, taking 2 to 3 weeks to arrive. By this time the meat has developed its full flavour and has nicely tenderised. Despite the food miles, it is relatively environmentally friendly due to the animals being grass fed and not transported by plane. If you buy British lamb for Easter then chances are the lambs were born in January and had been reared indoors and fed on animal feed rather than grass. A consequence of this life and young age at slaughter is the meat is very tender but less flavoursome compared to longer-lived, grass-fed British lamb available later in the year.

April generally is a difficult month for seasonal British ingredients. Generally, gardeners are busy sowing seeds and enjoying the first flushes of spring and there is relatively little ready to harvest. Instead, the last of the stored produce is being used up and a few key fresh ingredients take centre stage as a welcome sign of the new season. These key players include fresh herbs, just starting to put out new growth after a dormant winter; wild garlic, asparagus and rhubarb. So my Easter roast lamb meal would celebrate these lovely flavours.

You can't really beat the combination of lamb, rosemary and garlic. I insert slices of a garlic clove into stabbed cuts in the meat and poke rosemary leaves into the hole too. Wild garlic (or ransoms) can be foraged in March and April in certain woodlands (although they are very scarce in Milton Keynes due to suitable underlying geology).

If you can't find wild garlic and are growing your own garlic in the garden then the fresh new leafy growth on the new garlic plants makes an excellent substitute. You need to harvest only 4 or 5 of these leaves. Garlic chives are another alternative that works well. Back in the kitchen, finely chop the leaves then mix them into mustard powder and add a little water to form a thick paste. Smear this green garlic mustard over the surface of the raw meat. Season with salt and pepper then roast at 180°C, gas 4 for the appropriate amount of time depending on the size of your piece of meat.

Stored potatoes can be used to make lovely roast potatoes or you can seek out the first of the Jersey Royal new potatoes in the shops. Leeks, purple sprouting broccoli, parsnips and possibly the first of the asparagus are available from the veg patch in April so any or all of these would make a tasty side dish to this roast. And for dessert, something with rhubarb... crumble or fool maybe. A finishing touch of a pot or vase spring flowers on the table and you're all set of a spectacular celebration of British springtime.

Chicken & Leek Spud Pie

Leeks are a tasty and very versatile vegetable so I never mind having plenty of them growing. Indeed, we often leave a few leeks to flower during the summer, partly because the bees absolutely love them and partly so that they will set seed and self sow themselves all over the place. With no effort at all we end up with lots of baby leeks. Some of them grow in places that are less than ideal but this matters little - we simply "weed" them out and eat them whilst still tiny. So, on Saturday, whilst the weather gave us a brief glimpse of spring, we went out to do some tidying and sorting of the plot and one of my jobs was to remove the leeks that were growing in the wrong place. A bit of therapeutic weeding resulted in a bucket full of tasty, tiny leeks to take home.

Saturday night we chopped some up and added them to our stirfry. Sunday we made roasted whole baby leeks with our roast chicken (5 minutes boiling followed by 10 minutes on a baking tray in the oven at 180°C, gas 4 covered in olive oil and a sprinkling of salt). And tonight I used more leeks and leftover chicken to make Chicken & Leek Spud Pies.

Chicken & Leek Spud Pies (serves 4).

4 baking potatoes
Left over chicken
Left over gravy
Leeks
Butter
Salt & Pepper
Grated cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°C, gas 6. Scrub the potatoes then pat dry and rub over with a little sunflower oil and salt then microwave for 10 minutes. In the meantime, break up the cooked chicken into small pieces and mix with the left over gravy (or make some fresh and allow it to cool down before adding to the cold chicken. Cut the leeks into small pieces and boil for 5 minutes until tender then drain, reserving the cooking water, and allow to cool before adding to the chicken. When the potatoes have finished microwaving, cut each one in half and spoon out the potato into a large bowl. Mash the potato, adding a splash or the reserved leek cooking water, some butter and salt and pepper to taste. Spoon the chicken mix into the empty potato skins then top with a layer of the mashed potato and finish with some grated cheese. Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until hot through and the cheese has browned nicely. Serve hot with vegetables.

Battling the Weather, mentally as much as physically

The British are known for their love of talking about the weather but, let's face it, we have a lot to talk about! One thing you can be sure of, whatever the weather is currently doing, it won't be doing it for much longer. What I'm constantly amazed at is how much influence the weather has on our mood. It is certainly harder on a dim, grey, wet day to be chirpy and upbeat than it is on a warm, sunny day. As we move through the seasons, I find my attitude to the weather shifts very quickly and yet I find it hard to remember how I was feeling just a few days previously, or to imagine how I might feel in a week or two. The weather seems to keep my mood very much in the present.

When the summer is here and the weather is warm and the days long, it is so easy to pop in and out of the house with little more effort than slipping on a pair of flip flops. Things in the vegetable garden are growing well and the harvests are good and it is hard to imagine that things will change. I find myself optimistically sowing seeds for late crops or for vegetables that will be ready in the winter, thinking that I shall appreciate it in the middle of winter when I can pop round to the allotment and dig up a parsnip or a leek. But then, suddenly (and it does seem sudden), winter arrives. The nights draw in, the wind becomes bitter and the soil becomes soggy and sticky. That dream of harvesting parsnips and leeks doesn't match the reality. It's so dark in the evenings I can't even get out to the allotment and at the weekends I just don't fancy togging myself up in suitably warm, scruffy clothes and struggling across the plot, with my boots becoming heavier with every step as they accumulate mud. As for harvesting parsnips - that heavy clay is not about to willingly give them up to any amount of tugging and quite honestly I don't fancy washing half an allotment's worth of soil down my kitchen sink to clean them anyway. If it was all that stood between me and starvation then it would be another matter... but it isn't.

So through the winter I amuse myself with the things I was sensible enough to pack into the freezer, washed and carefully portioned and I stare out of  the window at the bleak weather. There is no sense of longing inside me, just a grim acceptance and a slight nagging worry in the back of my mind that I will never again feel the urge to go outside and grow something. And with my daily to-do-list longer than is possible to complete anyway, I wonder how I will find the time for it all.

Then, out of the blue, comes a sunny day and my spirits lift. Suddenly, I find myself positively drawn into the garden where there is satisfaction to be gained even from the mundane tasks of clearing dead leaves or washing flower pots. The urge to sow something comes back with a rush and I find myself hunting out half-empty bags of potting compost and dusty flower pots just to get a few things started. In fact, the hardest thing is to reign in these feelings and avoid the temptation of doing too much too soon.

Round on the plot the parsnips, leeks and beetroots are still where I left them back at the end of autumn, a little worse for wear but still edible. Now there is satisfaction to be had from harvesting these few remaining homegrown crops, that so suit the comfort food needed at this time of year. Tiny beetroots that are not going to swell any further are harvested and made into the last jar of pickled baby beets of the season. Parsnips are finally yanked from their untimely graves and the leeks are now fat and ready for the pot. And I know just the pot. After a satisfying day in the garden, as the sun sets, still early, and the night quickly becomes cold, time for a nice warming dinner with some seasonal veg.

Ham & Leek Cannelloni (serves 4) (from Good Food http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/7694/ham-and-leek-cannelloni)

2-3 leeks (depending on their size)
300ml vegetable stock
100g cooked ham or gammon
1 pack of fresh lasagne (6 sheets)
200g creme fraiche
1 heaped teaspoon on mustard
Cheddar
2 slices of bread made into crumbs

Preheat the oven to 200°C, gas 6 and find a suitable ovenproof dish. Slice the leeks and boil in the vegetable stock for 5 minutes. In the meantime, cut the ham into small pieces. Once the leeks are cooked, drain them, reserving the stock then combine the leeks and ham. Spoon the leek and ham mixture equally along the centre of each sheet of lasagne then roll the sheet into a tube and place side by side in the dish, with the joins down. Mix the creme fraiche, stock, mustard and some grated cheese together then pour the liquid over the cannelloni. Scatter the breadcrumbs all over top and finish with some more grated cheese then bake for 20 minutes until cooked through and golden. Serve with a side dish of vegetables or salad.

I'm over 30, therefore I make stew

Last week I found myself making a rather delicious beef stew for dinner. It is, after all, the ideal dish for this time of year - warming and satisfying and making the most of the winter allotment veg. It was, however, something that rather alarmed my 11 year old daughter. Her distress was mainly caused because I had decided that we were all going to eat the stew for dinner and she didn't fancy it in the slightest. As I stood, stirring the gently bubbly pot full of meatiness, she looked at me sadly and declared, "When I'm an adult, I'm never going to make stew."

I looked back at her and understood exactly where she was coming from as I too would have thought the same thing at her age. At 11 I didn't much care for most vegetables so the thought of having a one-pot meal in which vegetables lurked mysteriously within a thick gravy, so well camouflaged that they were hard to spot and almost impossible to identify even when located, somewhat killed my appetite. I could not have imagined back then that one day I would wilfully create such a dish myself. I have a distinct memory too of deciding that I would never be able to bring myself to stuff a chicken. Yet, here I was in my late 30s, with dozens of stuffed chickens behind me, stirring a beef stew and actively enjoying the delicious aromas that were wafting up from the pot.

"Ah, well," I explained, "you may say that now, but sometime over the age of 30 you will find yourself cooking a stew for dinner. I don't know why it happens, but it happens to us all."

"It's a sign you are turning into an old granny," she declared and stalked out of the kitchen in disgust.

Well, I'm pushing 40 now so yes, I suspect from an 11 year old's perspective I'm well on my way to old age. I'm waiting for the moment when I realise that, if I'm going to continue to live, I shall have to have a sit down and a cup of tea. A year or so from now I shall be dozing off in front of daytime telly I suspect.

But you do have to wonder how you can come from a point of view of not even wanting to eat stew to cooking a stew up for the family in a little more than 20 years. I know not every one is the same; my 9 year old daughter loves vegetables and is enthusiastic about the stew and some people will never, even when they are an old granny, want to eat beef stew.  It is just amazing that for me, and many others, tastes change so much as we grow up.

Maybe it comes down to that idea that you have to taste something 10 times before you like it. I guess I've just been exposed to vegetables enough now to like them. Ha! I don't think so, I'm never going to like broccoli!

Maybe it's because I'm in control of the ingredients - I know what has gone into the pot and I know I like everything that it is in. I chose to put those ingredients together and to put them, cooked up, onto my plate. It wasn't forced upon me by some well-meaning but misguided adult, willing me to like it.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. I'm just glad that I'm now "adult" enough to eat beef stew without fishing out the swede and I hope that one day, as my daughter approaches middle-age she'll find herself eyeing up a pack of beef shin and wonder, shall I have stew for dinner?

Beef Stew (serves 4 but you could double the amount and freeze half for a quick second helping)

400g beef shin (ideally, but stewing steak will do)
3 tbsp flour
Salt & pepper
3 tsp mustard powder
A little fat/oil for frying
2 medium onions or 1 large one
1 small stick of celery, finely chopped
2 large carrots, finely chopped
Some finely chopped swede or turnips
1 pint of beef stock
10 fl oz of ale
2 bay leaves

Cut the beef into large chunks. Put the flour, salt & pepper and mustard onto a plate then place the beef pieces into the floury mix and coat well. Heat the fat/oil in the bottom of a large saucepan then fry the beef (in batches if necessary) until brown. Set aside. Next fry the onions and add to the beef. Pour a little of the stock into the bottom of the pan and scrap the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula to deglaze it. Return the meat and onions to the pan then pour in the remaining stock and ale and add the vegetables and bay. Bring to the boil then turn down and simmer, with the lid on, for 3 hours until the meat is very tender and the vegetables are well cooked. Stir occasionally and add more water if needed. If it looks a little too liquid towards the end then take of the lid for the last 15 minutes to reduce. Taste and add more seasoning if necessary then serve hot with potatoes.

For the potatoes, you might like to try this. Preheat oven to 190°C, gas 5. Finely slice 4 medium to large potatoes into thin rounds then rinse them in a bowl to remove the excess starch. Drain the water then pour in a little oil (or melted duck/goose fat) and add salt & pepper to season. Stir well until the potatoes are all coated in the seasoned oil. Carefully stack the potatoes on their edges into a suitable ovenproof dish. Place the dish in the microwave for 5 minutes to start the cooking and to evaporate off the remaining rinse water. Place the dish in the oven and cook for an hour until the top edges of the potatoes are brown and crisp.