Beautiful Bluebells

Just outside Penryn, between Truro and Falmouth is the lovely Enys Gardens.

Having never been in the 8 years we have been here, I have now been twice in a week and what a treat it was.

Considered the oldest garden in Cornwall, every year it has a glorious Bluebell Festival, and on Bank Holiday Monday (in light drizzle) we set off to check it out.

Approached by a woodland drive lined with Pulmonarias and Hellebores...

there's a scattering of mossy, stone buildings, containing a history room, a tea room and a clock tower.

Follow the path one way and you get to the house, follow the path the other and you reach the wider garden.

First the New Zealand Garden, with plants collected by Victorian members of the Enys family...

and on into the park with glorious Rhododendrons and patches of the beautiful Bluebells.

Down mossy paths and through stone arches, and into the flower gardens...

with tall Camasias and bright green Euphorbia...

and vibrant tulips...

 and out into the Stumpery, strewn with with jagged, stripped stumps

 Further round is the pond, misty and still...

 bounded by Tree Ferns, Rhododendrons and Gunnera...

with winding streams and tranquil islands...

 and explosions of vibrant Candelabra Primulas.

But at the centre is the Parc Lye and at this time of year that is why people visit...

for the Bluebells.

The Parc Lye is an ancient meadow undisturbed for hundreds of years and the English Bluebells (and the wild garlic) are spectacular.

Drifts of them stretch for as far as the eye can see, dainty and purply blue, so much prettier than the Spanish ones I just can't eradicate from my garden!

They are a little late this year and on Bank Holiday Monday the Bluebells were only 30% of their full effect (according to the Enys Garden website - there's a bluebell update regularly). By my second visit, the following Saturday to celebrate a friends birthday, they were much further on. What a difference a warm week makes.

They were breathtaking - well worth two visits.

The dilapidated house was open both weekends I was there, the first for an art exhibition and the second for a craft fair. 

The house has been uninhabited for a number of years, has suffered from all kinds of rot (there's a whole list of types) and is home to a large bat colony, making renovation tricky. 

Slowly but surely, in a bat friendly manner, work is taking place and it is a marvellously decrepit backdrop for events.

Some bits look quite respectable, others not so much!

Some of the peeling grandeur looked quite like art itself.

The buzz of the art exhibition and then the craft fair bought it to life. This is my little party being persuaded into some craft purchasing (after a good deal of tea and cake purchasing at the lovely tea room - well it was Caron's birthday!).

 There were beautiful Bluebells surrounding the house...

and they had made it indoors too, although these are Spanish Bluebells. The dainty English ones are far too precious to pick!