The glorious No.1 bestseller, reissued in a sumptuous paperback edition.
Until the First World War, the estate gardens at Heligan were one of the glories of Cornwall. Thereafter, through growing neglect, they slipped gradually to sleep. This is the amazing story of their rediscovery and restoration, or the Victorian vision and ingenuity which first created that subtropical paradise, and of the modern obsession and improvisation which recreated it.
Tim Smit was born in 1954 in Scheveningen, Holland, and educated in the UK. After graduating from Durham University he worked as a county archaeologist before spending ten years as a record producer and composer, successful in Europe, the USA and Japan.
In 1987 he and his family moved to Cornwall where, with John Nelson, he was to discover Heligan.