Halesia carolina had come out a lot in 3 days and will now be presentable.

Pseudocydonia sinensis in flower on Sinogrande Walk which I have seldom seen before but most of the pink flowers have been battered by the rain.

Another ghastly looking big leaf rhododendron on the way out.

The Game Larder starts to fill up with cut stuff for the show.

Rhododendron ‘Vuna’.

Rhododendron arboreum ‘Tony Schilling’ is rain battered but Rhododendron arboreum ‘Sir Charles Lemon’ is just coming out beside it.

Buds showing up already on Magnolia tamaulipana. They would normally not be out until July or August.

Good bark on Gymnocladus dioica.

A magnolia which blew over in a gale above Hovel Cart Road. A rare occurrence.

Rhododendron mengtszense (AC 5663) appears in the Rhodo Pocket guide only under very rarely in cultivation or of doubtful provenance (and not in the main index). An Alan Clark collection. Rather good today and there are 2 separate plants in flower.

A young Rhododendron fulvum (KR 10084) flowering well. One of Keith Rushforth’s.

Rhododendron ‘Lady Montagu Group’ bent over with the weight of its flowers and the rain.

The Game Larder is filling up – over 30 different vases of things for the display .

Betula kweichowensis subsp. fansipanensis (formerly Betula insignis var. fansipanensis) is developing good greyish-brown bark and the emerging leaves are dark in colour.

Rhododendron ‘Anne Teese’ just out by George’s Hut.

Cut show material from high up on Plagianthus betulinus.

2023 – CHW

A trip to the greenhouse on this much drier week to see what is new. Tremendous amounts of newly potted cuttings and seedlings. A wonderful sight of productivity by Asia with many first time successes.

First flowering of Magnolia ‘Romina’s Pink’ in the frames. (M. x soulangeana ‘Rustica Rubra’ x M. ‘Iolanthe’). Not yet a representative flower or a decent one when I check the reference books.

This is labelled Cercis glabra but is obviously an Amelanchier. Perhaps Asia could check where we got if from? Burncoose sells C. glabra but this isn’t it!

Clematis armandii ‘Apple Blossom’ on the wall making a fine show today.

Philotheca myoporoides – Gin and Tonic in a Pot – a gift from Hayloft. I couldn’t smell g&t today.

Rhododendron hypoleucum – a seedling from OP12168 with dainty flowers. Formerly Ledum hypoleucum from Russia and Japan so very much a rockery plant.

Seedlings of Nageia nagi (formally Podocarpus nagi) growing well. A gift from Raf Laenarts. We did once buy this in from China but it proved too tender to grow outside.

Maytenus magellanica is quite different in appearance from the Maytenus boaria which we grow well. A smaller and slower growing tree but also a Chilean species.

The attractive foliage of Syringa protolaciniata does not look lilac – like at all. A shrub from Afagnistan with lilac flowers in May which I look forward to seeing.

Molly Jackson receives the cup at the CGS Show for the best nursery plant display by Burncoose.

Here are the two Caerhays CGS cups together with the recent Rosemoor ones.

2016 – CHW
Here is the text of my speech given on the lawn today to nearly 90 guests invited by Christie’s and the Historic Houses Association to the 2016 Garden of the Year award for Caerhays:We were honoured and indeed surprised to have received this prestigious award from the Historic Houses Association and Christie’s. However only a little of the gardening credit can be taken by those of us who are here today.My great grandfather, J C Williams, started gardening here by breeding daffodils in the 1880s. Between 1902 and 1932 JC sponsored, either personally or as part of syndicates, no less than nine expeditions by the great Chinese plant hunter George Forrest. JC also received just as many species of new Chinese plant seeds from Ernest Wilson. It was JC who, with his 50 pre First World War gardeners, grew these plants from seed and created the very informal (some would say chaotic) garden you see here today. Survival of the new Chinese species collected in feudal warzones, where bows and arrows were still weapons, was more important than a grand design plan. Who knew what species of rhododendron, oak, acer or magnolia would survive in our climate and how tall they would eventually grow?JC died in 1939 and my great uncle, Charles Williams, took on. He too was a keen gardener and hybridiser although heavily involved in wartime politics. It is said with great justification that the garden would have been overrun by brambles and neglect if he had not spent all his spare time in the garden with a scythe (probably to avoid his teetotal aunts and the East End evacuees who were occupying the house).My father, who took on the mantle of running Caerhays in 1955, was not initially a gardener. His self taught knowledge and expertise from reference books soon however became considerable and my brother and I were brought up in the garden. In his tenure my father bred around a dozen new magnolias and laid out the start of what today is a national collection of magnolias.The 1960s and 1970s saw many of the Wilson and Forrest Chinese rhododendrons come into their prime. Many soon succumbed to old age and began to die as 60 to 80 years is a fair innings for a rhododendron.There was therefore a risk that Caerhays would become a declining historical museum like a few other Cornish gardens today of similar vintage. Things were brought to an abrupt head by the January 1990 hurricane which destroyed 20-25% of the garden in a day. My father, in retirement, left that day for a lengthy tour of Cornish clubs in Australia. When he returned the mess was cleared and in 1991 a massive replanting and rejuvenation or regeneration plan began which continues today.
The true recipients of this award should however be the Caerhays head gardeners of whom there have been only four since 1895. This is perhaps the secret of Caerhays’ continuous development. Mr Martin, Charles Michael, Philip Tregunna and now since 1996 Jaimie Parsons. All have probably done far more to initiate hybridisation work than my ancestors and they take all the credit for growing the new varieties and planting them out.The next crisis for the garden was sudden oak death or phytophthora ramorum. Dear old Defra told us in 2004 to cut down all our ponticum shelterbelts immediately and sweep all the paths daily. Common sense, thanks to English Heritage, eventually prevailed but we did clear the ponticum over 10 years replacing it with laurel and aucuba. By the law of inverse consequences we actually also then gained space for huge new planting areas.This led us to have the courage to add a 10 acre field into the garden which you will see achieving respectability. Before World War I Old Park and Forty Acres wood were part of the garden. Today they are again after massive clearance work to provide the space for more and more of the now 650 magnolia species and hybrids in the collection as well as a new collection of wild sourced Chinese rhododendron species. So we are still expanding and now have a national collection of podocarpus as well as growing important collections of enkianthus (my passion), styrax and stewartia. Eighty record trees remain in the garden of which the majority are still Chinese originals albeit some on their last legs.You will find the garden, and if I say so myself I do mean it, in very good heart, neater, tidier and more managed than for decades with acres and acres of new planting in the last 20 years. For this Jaimie Parsons and Michael Levett with their team of three (and one retiree who is here today after 48 years’ service) should take ALL the credit.We thank you again, HHA members, for selecting Caerhays for this great national award. My great grandfather, who hated publicity and visitors, would have been horrified and almost certainly would have declined. My father might have too before we opened the gardens fully in 1992. Thank you too to the directors and staff of Christie’s for all their support in making this day possible for us all.And finally thank you to my family for putting up with my gardening mania which I hope they will do more to develop as the years go by. It is in the genes!Thank you!