You don’t expect to walk among the towering spikes of Wachendorfia thyrsiflora and drifts of Verbena bonariensis in the depths of Cornwall. But Potager Garden and Greenhouse Café near Falmouth offers a new experience in garden visiting for the region, and not just in terms of the planting. At the heart of the four and a half acre plot, on the site of a former commercial nursery, is a large glasshouse which has been converted into a café where, on a Sunday afternoon, visitors take lunch or tea, play Chinese chequers and then wander through the terraced grounds for a game of boules or badminton.
The brainchild of joint owners Peter Skerrett and Dan Thomas, the garden is now in its sixth year but is only just getting the attention it deserves. Its creation has been a labour of love for Skerrett, a teacher of spatial design at Falmouth College of Art, and Thomas, assistant head gardener at nearby Trebah, one of the finest gardens in Cornwall, who have devoted all their spare time, with occasional help from volunteers, to making it. They open the garden and café on Sundays, and serve the food themselves, and even make some of the dishes.
Their inspiration came from a small project in Holland which combined a garden with a café and a bicycle-hire service. They wanted a garden that would be not only beautiful and inspiring but also a place for families to relax in. With that in mind, and with the nursery’s three greenhouses as fixtures, they arranged the garden as a group of gently descending open terraces that move easily from one to the other via gravel paths and wide steps, each level with a different layout and planting. Huge quantities of undergrowth were cleared but many of the existing trees, especially around the greenhouse café on the middle terrace, were kept and provide valuable shade from Cornwall’s late summer sun.
In the top greenhouse amid prostrate raspberry arctotis, a carpet of brilliant-orange Lotus maculatus and tall abutilons, a group of teenagers play round the ping-pong table while other friends gather on the low walls of the conversation pit that holds a giant Washington Palm, Washingtonia robusta.
A life-sized wooden man, doing a single-handed handstand, by local artist Dan Gallally, beckons you into a gravel garden which is strewn with self-seeders such as Sisyrinchium striatum and the sharp yellow Verbascum nigrum. In the middle a beautifully clipped bank of low-growing Olearia macrodonta is actually a group of leftover stock plants from the nursery which is being allowed to grow old gracefully.
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There is no fixed route through the garden, just a meandering mass of good plants (there are towering Wachendorfia thyrsiflora everywhere) and great views, with the occasional large sculpture as punctuation.
The second terrace down is home to the greenhouse café where a grove of cherry trees with hammocks slung between them casts welcome shade on diners. Skerrett and Thomas removed the glass from half the roof of the Forties growing house and replaced it with timber to keep it cooler and to strengthen it against the elements. The front end, still fully glazed, is given over to sales of plants: Pittosporum tobira, the tiny and exquisite Agapanthus ‘Peter Pan’, Crocosmia ‘Emily McKenzie’ and Crinum x powellii, most of which are grown by Thomas in the original propagation house. The café end is a lively mix of tables and chairs, wooden boardgames and blackboards listing home-made lime and coconut cake and fresh organic salads.
Beyond, low hedges of hornbeam and the silver-leaved blue-flowered germander (Teucrium fruticans), herbaceous borders of watsonias, penstemons, echinacea and cleome flow down to the boules and badminton lawns. Tucked away in one corner is the potager itself. Filled with the produce that make up many of the café’s delicious home-made dishes and preserves, such as rhubarb, salads of every description, Jerusalem artichokes, cardoons and a wealth of culinary herbs, it is in fact the most formal part of the garden. The vegetables are all grown organically, to Soil Association certification, and Skerrett and Thomas have embraced the principles of sustainability and community involvement for the whole garden. There is even a compost loo, and Volunteers and WOOFERs (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) are welcomed.
At the very bottom of the garden, beyond an ancient yew hedge, is an old orchard of Cornish apples which are made into punchy juice. At its side grows a coppice of stunted maples and beeches through which a glade has been cut to reveal a view of unparalleled beauty across rolling country towards Helston and the Lizard Peninsula. It is the crowning glory of this very special garden experience.
Potager Garden and Greenhouse Café, High Cross, Constantine, Falmouth, Cornwall (01326 341258; www.potagergardennursery.co.uk). Open 11am-5pm every Sunday, from April to the end of September, and by appointment