(Not So) Secret Cornwall - Sir Tim Smit and The Lost Gardens of Heligan
One of the most inspirational people in South West England is Sir Tim Smit… I have no qualms about stating this - I have interviewed Tim a number of times and have always come away energised by what ever it is he’s been talking about.
I was interviewing a leading Cornish businessman the other day and he said much the same thing - so when i came hoe i looked through my files and found this interview i did with Sir Tim a few years ago at a ceremonial occasion when staff at The Lost Gardens of Heligan were celebrating the visitor attraction’s 25th anniversary.
If you’ve never been to The Lost Gardens I do recommend a visit - it surely must be one of the most enjoyable gardens open to the public anywhere in Europe.
This is the article I wrote after interviewing Sir Tim at the 25th anniversary event….
Movers, shakers, achievers, do-ers, call them what you will… Every community should have one; every office or workplace will know the type; each committee, group, council or company needs one. They’re the people who reach out and get things done, inspire others to do the same, achieve the unachievable, and believe the word “impossible” to be a lie.
The West Country has one such person, and it is not often that you could say that about a single individual operating in a large region like this. He’s called Sir Tim Smit, and everyone from Bristol to Land’s End - and way beyond - will have heard of him.
His fame and reputation have mainly been earned through his involvement with Cornwall’s Eden Project and because of his part in helping to transform the Lost Gardens of Heligan from impenetrable thicket into what it is today - i.e. one of the most loved and visited gardens in all the UK.
Most people will have seen Sir Tim on television or heard him on the radio - his languid tones conveying complex and difficult-to-conceive ideas with ease - his slightly rough-edged voice enthusing, haranguing, praising, cajoling and all the other things an ideas-man has to do in order to win his way.
Tim Smit is one of those people who has the knack of being able to take something big and impressive - but also amorphous and unwieldy - and mould it into a simple concept that is so wondrous it wins people’s hearts or, at the very least, captures their imaginations.
I’m talking about the sort of thing where a hundred people might say: “Look, we’ve got this fantastic idea - it’s going to require everything from A to Z to be successful - so I’ll take you through all the relevant bullet points…”
Instead of this, I can imagine Tim Smit saying something like: “Here’s the rainbow - and what I’m putting in your lap right now is the pot of gold that might be at the end of it.”
One reason I can write about Sir Tim like this is because I followed him for a couple of hours this week and watched carefully as he entertained, amused, informed and generally inspired a group of over 100 people. I suppose he was in his element - certainly the Dutchman, who has adopted Cornwall as his home, knew every single inch of the landscapes we were walking though and not of the people in the audience.
For this was the 25th birthday party of the Lost Gardens of Heligan. A quarter century anniversary commemorating the amazing transformation of a corner of Cornwall that was once thicket and is now a famous visitor attraction… The birthday party took the form of a walk with Tim Smit, along with owner John Willis and many others who have worked, slaved, laboured, and generally volunteered for all manner of jobs big and small in what was once an impenetrable jungle.
“Impenetrable is a very good word,” said Sir Tim when we met up for an in-depth interview after the walk. “But actually, for things to have a mystery, they need to be a bit impenetrable don’t they? It sounds like a metaphor for life, but things that are hard work - like discovering something or reading a difficult book - make everything worthwhile.”
You see what I mean about selling the pot of god at the rainbow?
Sir Tim went on: “I feel so sorry for people who want instant satisfaction. They think they are making themselves happy, but they don’t realise the pleasure of something is there because of the sweat on their brow.
So, the obvious question: how did a Dutch bloke who’d been working in the music business end up helping to rescue the well known West Country paradise…
“My degree was in anthology and archaeology - I’ve always adored archaeology and still do. By accident I ended up working in the music business - and again through accident I ended up on a whim living in Cornwall. I fell out of love with the music industry but wasn’t sure what to do - then I was given a pig called Horace by a friend called Rob Poole who was running Newquay Zoo. And I just loved that pig. So we found a Doris - and Horace and Doris had lots of babies. And I thought: ‘Great! I want to have a rare breeds farm!’ So that’s how we began.
“Because on my way driving from St Austell to Goran - which is where I lived - there was this bend here on the road, beyond which there was a lot of land which wasn’t being used. I was talking to my mate John Nelson a builder (who has now passed away but was also hugely instrumental in saving Heligan) and he told me the land was owned by John Willis.
“So I came to see him and John gave me a cup of coffee which was far too hot. He told me he’d rented out the land to someone else - but, because I hadn’t even touched my coffee yet, we had to do some small talk. I mentioned I was an archaeologist and he said he’d just inherited the estate next door - and he believed there was an old garden in there: would I like to go in there with him? That’s how it all began.
“So the next day we went in with machetes - and I fell in love with it. I decided I was going to change my career. This was what I was going to do.”
Tim Smit drifts easily from fact and story into belief and philosophy mode. And why not? There are a lot of people who are inspired by him.
“The secret… and I say this to young people a lot - the secret is to fall in love with something. Because if you do, at least your body is certain you like it - which means you will be very convincing when you talk to other people. I learned it in the music business: if you love something, you can be certain there will be millions who will feel the same as you. So the only issue is marketing.
“So the moment I fell in love with Heligan I knew there would be millions like me who would find it beguiling. But the issue was: first of all just to pursue it… We didn’t do it because we wanted to open the gardens to the public. We didn’t pursue that. It didn’t work like that. We thought: wouldn’t it be cool to do this!
“We didn’t have a business-plan or anything,” said Tim, now swaying back towards Smit philosophy: “People say to be professional you have to have a business-plan, but it would have been bollocks here. So many people wreck their great ideas because they are asked to have a business-plan - but, actually, if they’d just gone for it they would have discovered what they needed to do. Usually those are the things that you wouldn’t have anticipated, so you wouldn’t have put them in your business-plan.”
I put it to him that such a huge and zany project also required a achiever, mover and shaker like him…
“I don’t want to be falsely modest - of course it makes a difference if you’ve got someone championing something. But it is amazing what happens to a man if you have fear of total failure. If you start a project and put your name to it you are not going to let it fail - that was certainly a bit of a driver to me.
“But the reason for its success is that, very soon after John and I got to work, people started to volunteer. It was obvious that the garden had some sort of meaning to people. Most so called Great British Gardens are conglomerations of plants in one order or another purely for beauty. What is interesting about Heligan is that it had a network of paths built in the 1780s and it had a shelter belt to protect it - so the gardens were built up over different generations. They therefore have a kind of whacky eccentricity. There is not one thing here that is the best in the country - not one thing - but it is the only garden that has everything.
“You’ve got jungle, subtropical garden, productive gardens - all of which make it really romantic. The human story how we uncovered everything led us to deal with it in a way which, for instance, the National Trust would never do things. Just before we started this garden the National Trust had bulldozed a load of its glasshouses. They basically wanted to show how the upper classes had lived - they weren’t interested in showing how real gardeners had worked. It was a complete betrayal. Outrageous.
“So, basically, the working tradition of British horticultural workers was trashed. Heligan was the first place where we started a whole revival. People were shocked. The National Trust couldn’t believe that 300,000 people wanted to see a garden where the central point wasn’t a stately home but the traditions of working people. Actually most of us are working people - we are not lords and ladies.
“And we did it all on a shoestring. John and I restored this entire place on something like half a million quid. The best moment was when we went to Nanpean Chapel where there was an auction and we wanted some pews. John said at the end, ‘What about the floorboards?’ They hadn’t thought about that, so they said ‘100 quid?’ So we bought all the floorboards and joists and managed to restore the whole Melon Garden for a 100 quid. Brilliant!
“If you go into the flower garden where there’s a big vinery with lovely ironwork: some bloke came down from Staffordshire on holiday, saw that we didn’t have that and said, ‘I saved some from a greenhouse about 40 years ago - been in my garage all that time - I’ll give it to you’. And he did.”
It wasn’t only hard work and good fortune that helped Heligan succeed. The restoration received massive amounts of publicity, especially on television…
“The TV programmes made a big difference. And it taught me something important - men especially, feel alive when they have an adventure in mind. If you can create a narrative with an adventure in it, you’ll be amazed at how many people will come and join you.”
I asked Sir Tim what he’d felt walking around the gardens this week with a large group of people listening to his every word?
“I feel really privileged because having spent time concentrating on Eden, I come back and get the benefit of being a punter as well. It’s the spirit of place. I think there’s something quite womb-like and special about this place - and I love it. And I love the idea of being the steward of it.”
Talking about the restoration Sir Tim said there’d been talks about whether or not to leave certain areas wild and un-refurbished: “If you are a traditional head gardener, you cannot leave bits unrestored because it would be an insult to the tradition of keeping those working gardens clean. It would be a pastiche. Philip Macmillan Browse (who was gardening consultant in Heligan’s restoration) was great about that - he said: ‘Do you want to do the whole opera - or do you want to be the greatest hits album?’
“That is why it is genuinely romantic,” shrugged Tim Smit. “I think there is an irony. Faux-romance like Sleeping Beauty is one thing. We had our Sleeping Beauty moment, but basically the restoration means the Frog has been kissed now and turned into the Prince. We have to create a new narrative.”
Fitting words with which to introduce a new role for Heligan which will see it working in conjunction with the Eden Project and Abbey Gardens Tresco to run degree courses for the horticulturalists of the future. If anyone doubts the wisdom of that, let them talk to Sir Tim Smit - he will instantly show them the pot of gold that lies at the end of that potential rainbow.
