Spring in Somerset, Devon & Cornwall - six days

The Garden House at Buckland Monachorum

F L O R A Garden Tours visits spectacular large gardens like Hestercombe, the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Rosemoor, The Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project as well as charming gardens at The Garden House, Cotehele, Lanhydrock, Tintinhull House, Killerton, Knightshayes, Trebah and Trelissick. Spring arrives early in this, the mildest part of England. The bulbs and alpines will be ablaze, the fruit blossom out and some magnolias and early rhododendrons.

The tour begins at Bristol (near Somerset) or Exeter in Devon where many of the gardens are on the acidic old red sandstone underlying Dartmoor. We visit the Cornish gardens, where the Green Giant surfaced in surprise to find himself in the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Our base is by the harbour in the quaint little fishing village of Mevagissey. We also stay in a very comfortable seventeenth century farmhouse close to Glastonbury, a town rich in Arthurian legend. This is in Somerset where there is the limestone scenery of the Mendip Hills and the wilderness of Lorna Doone's Exmoor.