Some gardens have been planted from new, while others have been rescued from neglected wilderness. One charming garden hides away, concealed from the coastal path and nestling in a valley vibrant with butterflies and wild flowers; a brook babbles and feeds a prolific garden of vegetables growing along indigenous hosta and giant gunnera. This particular garden is a short walk across a couple of meadows to the open-air exhibition of internationally renowned scupltor Terence Coventry.

Another garden ambles down steeply terraced paths to the water's edge, with sheltered areas and running water, creating an ambience of calm meditation with stone carvings emulating the tranquility of a Buddhist temple, while up the lane, a riot of brilliantly perfumed gaudiness jumbles and tumbles over the granite hedge. Different yet again, is an Edwardian house with a stunning beachfront garden and lawns which has been restored to the relaxed elegance of its time, contrasting with a woodland refuge rich with wild life where the recent planting of a fern pit revealed some of the garden's original specimen plants from when it was first laid out in the 1920's.

Cornish gardens dither on the cusp of wild and cultivated, in a perpetual tug of war with the countryside constantly reclaiming that which we have tamed. However, the opinion of Tim Smit, of Eden Project and Lost Gardens of Heligan fame, is that, ' A garden is a symbol of mans' arrogance, perverting nature to human ends', isn't my view; I prefer Mahatma Gandhi's, 'To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves'.

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