May 2023 Talk: Tresco Abbey Gardens

Dr John Hughes, an RHS judge and a long term friend of CABAHS, gave an entertaining and informative talk on Tresco Abbey Gardens in the Isles of Scilly, situated just 28 miles off the coast of Cornwall. Benefiting from the Gulf Stream and Atlantic Drift, it has a mild climate and the magnificent garden is full of exotic and glorious plants from every Mediterranean garden zone, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Chile. It has been called a ‘Kew without the glass’. It is also home to a range of fauna including the red squirrel.

Augustus Smith, the founder  of the garden, bought the island from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1830 and it has been in his family, who have remained keen horticulturalists, ever since – though all the land, except the garden and house which he had built on it, was given back to the Duchy in 1922. The seventeen acre garden has been designed around a ruined Benedictine Abbey and within a sympathetic hard core of paths and arches, including statues supplied by the latest owner.

The garden grows a wide range of exotic and spectacular plants, some gigantic, which would do Kew Gardens proud, including a range of succulents, towering palms and giant red flamed trees. Using brilliant photography John showed a wide range of them on the screen, including the Monterey Cyprus and the 40-50 ft high Phoenix Canariensis, a range of Proteus, including leucospernum, the giant flowered King Proteus, Leucadendon Silver Tree, Ericas, Crassulas including Banksia Marginata, the pea plant Hardenbergia  Comptoniana, Acacia Pycnantha the Golden Wattle, Eucalyptus including the Tasmanium Blue Gum, Teleopea Spinosa, Doryanthes Palmeri the Giant Spear Lily, Callistemon Citrinus the Bottle Brush Plant, the ancient Wollemia Nobilis, Echiums, including Echium Candicans the Pride of Madeira, the Century Plant Agave Americana, Aeoniums, Euphorbia Melliflora, the Tree Aloe Aloe Arborescuns, Abutilon, Our lord’s Candle Yucca Whipplei, and Bromeliads including the Chilean Pineapple.

Many of the exotic plants cannot tolerate the mainland UK climate and need to be grown under glass, but a few, such as the Bottle Brush Plant seem to tolerate it.   

Tragically, the garden was ravaged by snow in 1987 and the Great Storm of 1990 when it was damaged by a 127 mile an hour wind, with less than 20 percent of the plants surviving. It has now been restored to all its glory, with the added benefit of the introduction of new ideas, including the Mediterranean garden. Tresco Abbey Gardens is a garden well worth visiting. It can be reached  by boat from Penzance or, more expensively, by helicopter.

Angela B