Light fantastic
A garden of warmth and intimacy in Cornwall basks in the sun’s rays overcoming the limitations of an exposed clifftop position
Spectacular Cornish light equals dreamy planting in Duncan Scott’s clifftop garden
Of all the places to garden in the UK, not many people would choose an isolated hamlet on the edge of north Cornwall’s Atlantic coast, open to the sea, the salt and the relentless westerly wind. Duncan Scott and his partner Jeremy McAuliffe have done exactly that and their garden at Treligga on the Cornish coast is a wonderful example of what is possible under extremely testing conditions.
For all its big cliffs, exposed conditions and limiting factors on the northwestern corner of Port Isaac Bay, the site’s great advantage is the light that bounces off the sea. It is a major asset in getting plants to grow – and grow big. The plants are also clearly happy in the clifftop shillet soil. The plot at Sea View is not over-gardened, but the result of good husbandry, attention to detail and a natural feel for, and devotion to, the craft.
While Sea View has been laid out with a design eye for the view to the sea and the space, Duncan’s real joy is the planting. Herbaceous perennials are his passion. A creative man who attended art college at 16, he was influenced by nature from boyhood, recalling the strong impression bluebell woods had upon him as a child. His drive to work with nature is strong and nothing in this garden feels forced. He understands what he has to work with and responds accordingly. “I wanted the garden to fit,” he says.
The property comprises a pretty, southwest-facing house and three fields that lead to the clifftop. It is in these couple of acres that Duncan has made his garden, beginning around the house with borders and shelter, spreading through an arch of hornbeam, beautifully woven in an Elizabethan style found in a book from that era, down steps into another garden rich with more borders and from there into a vegetable and cutting garden. Beyond is an open meadow and a mixed orchard of fruit trees. After that there is only a narrow field where cattle graze and then the cliff.
A visit to the Hadspen House garden of Nori and Sandra Pope in the late 1990s brought home to Duncan the concept of genius loci – or a sense of place. While he lists other influences as Beth Chatto, Noel Kingsbury and Piet Oudolf, along with his
THE LIGHT IS A MAJOR ASSET IN GETTING PLANTS TO GROW – AND GROW BIG
close neighbour Bett Hartley, this garden is definitively his work. The space has an inherent sense of itself, like it is supposed to be there. It is, he says, “a quest for feeling”.
The plants Duncan favours are befitting of clifftop habitat. The grasses are naturals for this landscape – Stipa gigantea and S. arundinacea, the feathery Calamagrostis x acutif lora ‘Karl Foerster’, the self-seeding Selinum wallichianum and Valeriana pyrenaica and V. officinalis are very much ‘of the country’. The care of these perennials is made easy by the force of the winter gales that knocks everything flat and allows it to be cleared away. No standing, new perennial winter stems here, except perhaps for the ultra-tolerant sea holly, Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’.
Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ and the wild carrot Daucus carota also give the garden the floaty, ephemeral feel that Duncan seeks. The light changes through the day and as the sun drops into the sea to the west in the evening the last rays give off a silvery sheen through the grasses. This two-acre garden is soft and abundant where it might be coarse and battle-scarred. It is a rare skill to create a comfortable, delicate yet robust garden in such a place.
USEFUL INFORMATION Address Treligga, Delabole, Cornwall PL33 9EE. Tel 01840 211033. Open By prior arrangement only from 11 June to 15 July, 2-5pm. Admission £4, for NGS, ngs.org.uk