The Lost Gardens of Heligan

Lost for years - so many years -

after the First World War.

With sixteen gardeners gone

and absent owners,

Heligan laid down a blanket of neglect,

almost for a lifetime.

Neglect reflecting the decline

from all the features,

fashioned with such care, passion

and excitement from

one generation to the next.

Neglect that veiled

a garden fashioned

only for the years ahead,

and, thoughtless for the moment,

grown towards a dreamed-of grandeur.

That first vision never faded,

but as paths and patterns,

lawns and landscapes,

flowers, shrubs and trees,

meticulously managed,

tortuously turned to bramble,

and a mazing jungle

changed by stealth to tangle,

the gardens grew

into a wilderness.

  

The work of generations

Was now laid to waste,

with decades of dedication

by ‘ordinary men and women’ in decay.

In little time, so little time,

Heligan had gone.

The grandest garden,

could now be wryly named as ‘Heligone’,
with the true name - meaning ‘willows’ - weeping.

Yet Heligan had gone

not to the grave,

but into hibernation,

waiting, not weeping, for the warmth

of an unexpected spring

to awake a re-born vision.

The message, etched in limestone:,

“Don’t come here to sleep or slumber”

had been needed; now was heeded.

The spring, and vision,

came by chance,

and Heligan is here again:

‘brought back to life in every sense’.