Case Study: Pencarrow

Growing old gracefully

I shouldn't really tell you this.

My favourite garden in the South West, and probably one of my favourites of all I've seen in the UK, is Pencarrow near Bodmin, Cornwall.

Where?

Pencarrow is certainly not one of the more well-known gardens, but it's a gem. We're spoilt for choice with big old gardens in the UK; the National Trust owns quite a number of excellent gardens, and there are plenty of privately owned ones around too. Some are grand and some are intimate, some have impressive landscapes and others have impressive plant collections.

Pencarrow House

What attracts me to the garden at Pencarrow isn't the scale of the garden, its age or its plant collection, it's how it's managed. Pencarrow is a garden that is ageing gracefully.

So many big old gardens fall into the trap of trying to cling onto their youth. The borders are primped and tidied as they were when the garden was run by an army of gardeners, and there's a conscious effort to hold on to every sense that many decades, if not whole centuries, have passed. I can understand why it happens. So much emphasis is placed on youth and vitality, and we're sold elixirs with the promise that it will stop the passage of time.

But time does pass. Once great gardens so often succumbed to the socio-economic challenges of the 20^th century, as charted so eloquently in Reginald Arkell's excellent novel Old Herbaceous. Time moves on for us all, every minute of every day, and there's no point pretending that it doesn't.

Wisteria hangs on what was once a wall inside a greenhouse

In its heyday Pencarrow was a grand estate, with extensive glasshouses, Italianate gardens and even Britain's first rock garden. At one time it was home to nearly every species of hardy conifer known to science, and was where the common name of monkey puzzle was coined for Araucaria araucana.

World Wars and the rapid rise of modern life took people away from the traditional jobs on the land. The old glasshouses became horrendously costly to maintain and were demolished. Echoes of the past are found everywhere, from the scarred walls of the old kitchen garden (now used as overflow parking) to the outlines of old flowerbeds that reappear in the formal lawn during the dry weather.

There isn't the budget to restore Pencarrow to how it used to be, and the garden is so much richer for it. The garden is in the capable hands of a skilled and wise Head Gardener, and while the lack of investment will bring some frustration it has guided a different way of thinking. Gardeners are masters of making the best of a situation, and at Pencarrow the skilful marriage of old and new, of wild and cultivated, has become a masterclass in how to let a garden age gracefully.

Pencarrow is an old garden

This is an old garden that feels old, where history oozes from every tree. More importantly this is a very gentle place, a place where life ambles along. It's a place where a mother goose opens one eye to check you're not stealing her goslings before returning to her nap in the sun. Pencarrow is an elixir for the frantic and aggressive nature of the modern world.

If you're one of those gardeners who likes everything to be just perfect then this place is not for you. Neither is it for you if you expect a garden to excite you and entertain you. There are many other fine gardens around that will suit you far more. Gardening isn't just about making things pretty, it's about nurturing a sense of place, cultivating the soul as much as cultivating the soil. The best plants laid out in the most technically brilliant ways won't give a garden its spirit; it takes the gentle understanding between gardener and garden.

The wild and the tamed

Pencarrow is a conversation between the exotic and the native, the wild and the tamed, the bucolic and the formal. It stands as testament to the idea that a garden can be gently guided and nurtured, rather than being borne down upon, and still be perfectly acceptable.

But above all Pencarrow is a masterclass in understanding that gardens are not fixed in one place in time, that gardens evolve. Old trees are lost and new trees are planted, the garden changes with the years as much as the seasons. This is a rare place, a special place, where the passage of time is embraced rather than being whitewashed over.

The driveway

If you find yourself in Cornwall make sure it's on your list of places to visit. Leave your expectations at the gate and let the spirit of the garden touch you.

https://www.pencarrow.co.uk/