PLANTS IN BLOOM >
Take a look at what’s in bloom at the tropical garden.
THROW OUT THE RULE-BOOK. Set aside your preconceptions about what can and cannot be grown in frost-cursed, rain-soaked Britain.
Welcome to the Abbey Garden
The tropical Abbey Garden is a glorious exception - a perennial Kew without the glass - shrugging off salt spray and Atlantic gales to host 20,000 exotic plants.
Many would stand no chance on the Cornish mainland, less than 30 miles away. Yet even at the winter equinox more than 300 plants will be in flower. All in all, the tropical garden is home to species from 80 countries, ranging from Brazil to New Zealand and Burma to South Africa.
By building tall wind-breaks, Augustus Smith channelled the weather up and over the network of walled enclosures he built around the Priory ruins, and the three terraces he carved from the rocky, south facing slope looking towards St Mary's.
The hotter, drier terraces at the top suit South African and Australian plants, those at the bottom provide the humidity that favours flora from New Zealand and South America.
The diversity is greater even than the Southern Mediterranean. Fringing the lush grid of paths criss-crossing the tropical gardens are cacti, date-palms and giant, lipstick-red flame trees; rarities like Lobster Claw; great white spires of Echia; brilliant Furcraea, Strelitzia and shocking-pink drifts of Pelargonium.
Statues symbolic of natural forces punctuate the tropical gardens. The shipwrecked figureheads in Valhalla museum remind you of the storms they have survived. Fittingly, the layout begins with the original plantings around the Priory and ends with the new, terraced Mediterranean Garden, a horticultural world tour condensed into just 17 acres.