Burncoose Nursery Garden - a hidden gem

This week saw Jayne and I shopping for one of our clients - on the hunt for a Deutzia and a shrub to replace a planned Acer that wouldn't get the shelter it needed. On our travels we passed Burncoose Nursery, and decided to drop in for a mooch around. Whilst I've been to the nursery on various occasions I had never looked around the garden attached.

 Billed as a woodland garden, it is an area full of specimen plants of enormous size that shows to fantastic effect at this time of year. The site is part of the Caerhays Estate and the garden was apparently an area used to grow on collected specimens from all over the world before they were taken for display at Caerhays Castle Gardens themselves. The Williams family who own Caerhays are historically well known for breeding Camelias, Rhododendrons and Magnolias, and the nursery  still continue this today.

There were long walkways with banked Rhododendrons, Magnolias, Camellias and Azeleas, in every shade, size and form (some of the combinations looked decidedly unplanned!)

And underneath were drifts of beautiful English Bluebells.

Some of the Camellias were over but there were still plenty going strong. The one above is Camellia Williamsii 'anticipation'. What a stunning plant to have named after your family.

The Magnolias were huge in size and impact...

and the Rhododendrons were just bonkers! Dripping with flowers, some as bright as can be...

and some a little more subtle like this Rhododendron Williamsianum (again with the name - lucky things!)

There were lots of trees, from Monkey Puzzle to Acer, all in various stages of coming into leaf.

This mixture of bright red Acer, yellow Magnolia (not sure if I can cope with that idea, is it just wrong?) and carpet of Bluebells stopped me in my tracks.

      

There were also some wonderfully architectural specimens, the Rhododendron on the left was huge with leaves that were well over a foot long, super glossy and topped with clusters of creamy bells. The shelter provided by the taller trees and shrubs also suited tree ferns, this one was a Dicksonia and the trunk was about 10' tall.

Then we saw this, it was a truly enormous tree covered in creamy flowers. What a stunning Magnolia we chorused, but no! It is apparently it is a Michelia Doltsopa. I had never heard of this so looked it up, it is a relative of the Magnolia and has scented flowers and, funnily enough, is available from Burncoose Nursery! How perfect is that - if only it didn't grow to 30ft height and spread, and was frost hardy I'd buy one tomorrow!

So could some of these shrubs be the original ones that arrived in the late 1800's? Who knows but some of the trees might be, and there were Magnolias and Pieris larger than I have ever seen before. 

My one criticism would be the lack of information. Some of the most notable specimens are labelled (especially if they are called Williams) but much is not and there is nothing about the history of the place (unless I was being very unobservant - which is always possible). I found this on the Caerhays website on the history of the gardens but no specific mention is made of Burncoose.

The garden is open all of this year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the nursery, so get along there soon - there were still lots of buds and things to come, it's definitely worth a visit.