Tag Archives: Cornwall

liriodendron tulipifera

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Until last week, I’d never seen a Liriodendron tulipifera in flower before. I’d seen photographs of the Tulip tree’s curious flowers in various gardening books of course, but it’s not quite the same as seeing them in the flesh. And I can’t say I was especially excited by what I’d seen in my books: the flowers are not charming like the Amelanchier’s, or beautiful in the way that some apple and cherry blossom is. But I have to admit that I did a double-take worthy of You’ve Been Framed as I strolled under the vast branches of the 175-year-old Tulip tree at Glendurgan Garden.

I’d approached the tree from the shadier side, which gives an amazing view of its immense gnarled trunk and lower branches, but no hint of the flowers nestling amongst the foliage on the sunnier side. But once you pass under that great limb in the photograph above, the branches beyond are filled with green and apricot tulip-shaped flowers.

The petals are quite rigid and fleshy, and with the bracts* at their base opened out they reminded me of tiny plastic tea cups – the sort of thing I used to trip over all the time in the girls’ bedroom once the lights were out.

Having seen this magnificent tree at Glendurgan, I was curious to see how the one at the Bristol Botanic Gardens was doing. I had planned to photograph it yesterday, but when the sun came out at lunchtime I found myself sitting by the lake admiring the medlar instead – next week perhaps.

Although people come from all over the world to see the garden’s camellias and rhododendrons, the maze below is another big draw, for adults and children alike. As we walked further into the garden, below the Tulip tree, the valley was filled with shrieks of delight as children leapt out at one another from behind bends in the maze. Parents stood at various vantage points around the maze and shouted directions to their lost offspring, whose bobbing heads could be seen moving with increasing urgency up and down, back and round between the neatly clipped hedges. A couple of children, my own included, ended up simply vaulting over at various points as they raced  each other to the little thatched hut in the centre.

As you can see, despite the gorgeous weather, there really weren’t many people about, and at times we found ourselves completely alone. However the beach at the bottom of the garden was packed, not with people sunbathing or swimming, but with paddling garden enthusiasts – no one had thought to bring their swimming things.

* I’m assuming they are bracts, they may not be but I can’t seem to find anything detailed enough to confirm one way or another, though an article on Wikipedia does note that the petals are actually tepals.

cornwall

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I packed the girls off to school this morning, fresh-faced and jolly after a glorious week in Cornwall. Phew! Another holiday down and a clear run, I hope, until the big one – though I do know that there’s an inset day lurking there somewhere, like an unexploded bomb. I won’t go looking for it just yet though.

Just in case the description of glorious Cornwall sounded far too smug and cheery, fellow parents will be pleased to know that things got off to the obligatory rocky start. First there was a bleak welcome to Cornwall as we crossed the Tamar Bridge. I tried to photograph Brunel’s strange and wonderful Royal Albert Bridge which runs alongside the road bridge, but the sheeting rain was against me. (Brunel’s bridge, with its ‘eyes’, always makes me think of the advertising hoarding for a failed optician in The Great Gatsby. I’m probably miss-remembering Fitzgerald though, as the last time I read Gatsby was over twenty years ago when I was revising for my A levels).

Fortunately the weather improved an hour or so later, though the same could not be said of the children’s behaviour. I find that the first 24 hours of any holiday involve intense whinging and bickering. Whilst the girls are generally pretty imaginative in their play, they prefer the comfort of well-worn themes when it comes to fighting and moaning. I think it’s safe to say that the script they chose for the start of the holiday would be familiar to most parents with more than one child. “It’s soooooo unfair, X has had much more/less/longer/better/bigger … and here you can insert whatever you like… than me!” We endured arguments about who sat where, who looked in which direction, who spotted a thatched roof first, who got to choose which songs were played and in what order etc. But by the time we stepped off the little passenger ferry that took us from Polruan to Fowey on Sunday morning, all their gripes and irritations had blown away.

Over lunch in Fowey we wrote a list of all the things we wanted to do and then diligently worked our way through it, happily crossing stuff off at the end of each day. This had the miraculous effect of short-circuiting any nagging. If a cry of “mum-can-we-have-a…” went up, I’d whip out the list and add it on, and somehow that was enough. By the end of the week we had ticked off a cream tea, crabbing at Polruan, Lanhydrock House and Cotehele, ice cream, Cornish pasties, mussels, a long walk, buying fudge, a day at Readymoney beach, a few board games, some knitting, a bit of reading, shell collecting …. and so on. We also managed to half celebrate a birthday. Matilda was 12 on the last day of our break so she got presents whilst bleary-eyed at breakfast, but had to wait until yesterday for her cake.

Sybil, who’d spent the week at kennels, decided to tick a very doggy thing off her to-do list and ate a huge chunk of cake whilst my back was turned. Luckily it had only just been cut in two, and not layered up with jam, cream and raspberries, so all was not lost.

Or at least not much of it once I’d tidied up the chewed edges and sandwiched it together. I will post more about both Cotehele and Landhydrock later this week, along with the Headland Garden at Polruan. I ticked all three off as a very lazy nod towards the RHS revision I should have been doing, and which starts again in earnest this week.