Visiting Cotehele's garden

Winter highlights in Cotehele’s garden 

In the winter look out for the brilliantly coloured dogwood in the centre of the Upper Garden pond, providing a warm glow on a chilly winter's day. Head to the white bed behind the cut flower garden to see heather, hellebores and snowflakes.

Winter is the time when the garden gets extra attention before spring arrives, with the cutting back of herbaceous plants on the terrace, pruning of the orchard trees and planting tulips ready for spring.

 

Cotehele's garden

East Terraces 

You’ll find terraced herbaceous borders on the east side of the house, leading down to the fantastic view of the viaduct towards the village of Calstock. 

Here there are seasonally mixed borders of hydrangeas, roses, geraniums, irises, salvia, Centaurea Montana and Centaurea Montana Alba and Veronicastrum. 

Upper Garden 

The Upper Garden has a central pond, which is filled with red and white water lilies in the summer. Their lily pads provide shelter for the frogs that spawn here in spring.   

The pond is framed on all four sides by herbaceous borders planted in different colour schemes. These planting schemes follow a plan introduced by garden adviser Graham Stuart Thomas in the 1960s.  

The Valley Garden  

A tunnel from the formal terraces leads to the steep and wild Valley Garden with a path curving down to a thatched Victorian summerhouse, a medieval stewpond and dovecote. Relax by the serene pond and then follow one of the wildflower-lined paths down to the quay. 

The Cut Flower Garden

The Cut Flower Garden is where our team grow a variety of flowers for display within the house and for our 60ft-long Christmas flower garland which can usually be seen within the Great Hall between November and December. Annually our team pick, strip and dry over 20,000 flowers for the garland - the number varies depending on the growing season.

Cotehele’s orchards 

Cotehele is home to a few different orchards which, as well as providing us with beautiful spaces to relax and delicious food and drink, are also home to many bees, butterflies and insects. There’s something to admire and enjoy in the orchards throughout the year, as every season makes it mark.

The Old Orchard

The Old Orchard was part of a wider deer park surrounding the garden at Cotehele in the 16th century. Today the orchard is filled with a variety of fruit trees, including apples, cherries, plums and medlars, with some dating back to 1960.

The Old Orchard is often filled with daffodils in the spring. Some of the oldest daffodils planted at Cotehele can be found around the banks of the former pond.

The Mother Orchard

The Mother Orchard at Cotehele was planted to provide a set of ‘mother trees’ that can be used for the selection of future varieties for both domestic and commercial use. The orchard includes more than 300 trees and 125 different heritage varieties of apple tree including Cornish Honeypinnick, Limberlimb, Pig’s Nose and Lemon Pippin. The varieties grown here have been bred to survive the south-west peninsula’s mild and damp climatic conditions.

 

What's that plant?

If you see a plant you’d like to identify you can simply email askthecotehelegardener@nationaltrust.org.uk. A member of the team will help identify it.

Try to include the location, attach some photographs, and describe any special features such as flower and leaf shape, colour, bark etc.