Paradise Uncovered

By Christopher Matthew 

Watching Monty Don, Ann-Marie Powell and Dr Toby Musgrave gazing in bewilderment at the 15-acre jungle of wildly over-grown Cornish greenery that was once the tropical paradise of Penjerrick near Falmouth, I knew just hoe they felt. Our garden in London has also become somewhat overgrown of late.

I cannot pretend that our almond tree is in the same league as the mighty tree ferns shipped back from Australasia at the height of the great Victorian plant-hunting age, and installed at Penjerrick by the then owner and passionate gardener Robert Fox.

But, like Monty and Co., I have often wondered what lay buried beneath the thick green curtain of leaves that has hung for years over our almond tree’s misshapen trunk and the brick wall beyond, and, during a brief lull in last weekend’s rain, I determined to find out.

Monty’s task was comparatively easy, thanks to a lot of old maps, books on Cornish gardens, a huge hydraulic platform, enough wheelbarrows and tools to stock a medium-sized garden centre and dozens of volunteers from the Duchy of Cornwall Agricultural college.

I had only a pair of blunt shears, my wife and a handful of black bin liners. Even so, I think we have gone some way to restoring our own little patch to its former glory.

Not everyone who watched last night’s edition of Lost Gardens will have felt a similarly close affinity. Indeed, I have often wondered what the appeal is of watching people squelching through mud, cutting down trees and hacking through undergrowth.

Monty’s cheerful optimism in the face of unexpected setbacks, an incredibly tight timetable and often appalling weather, is doubtless an inspiration to many a reluctant gardener.

In this he is more than matched by Ann-Marie with her in-exhaustible reserves of repartee (“It’s like Frankenstein!’ she cried as a new canopy of fern was grafted on to the top of an old trunk).

Toby’s enthusiasm for the many exotic plants harvested in the 19th Century from the Himalayas and South America by the likes of horticulturalists Joseph Hooker and William Lobb, was equally infectious, and the literary detective work that established when the garden was created and why was fascinating.