This month we visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. We’re going on an Easter egg hunt!
Count up all the Easter eggs you find hidden in the gardens and tea rooms, answer the quiz questions and then make up the photo caption!
The answers to the quiz are all in the history of the Gardens of Heligan below.

Good luck pals!

The Story Of The Lost Garden’s Of Heligan, Cornwall

Heligan is one of the most mysterious estates in England. Lost to the brambles of time since the outbreak of WW1, this Sleeping Beauty was re-awakened in 1990 become Europe’s largerden restoration project. Today Heligan’s 200 acres are a paradise for the explorer, wildlife, plant lover and garden romantic.

At the end of the 19th Century Heligan’s thousands of acres were at their zenith, but only a few years later bramble and ivy were already drawing a green veil over this Sleeping Beauty. The outbreak of WW1 was the start of the estate’s demise as its workforce went off to fight in the trenches, many sadly never to return.

This story played out in many of the large estates throughout Britain’s war period.

Unlike many other estates, however, the gardens and the land at Heligan were never sold or developed. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that Heligan House itself was eventually sold and split into private apartments.

After decades of neglect, the devastating hurricane of 1990 should have consigned the now lost gardens to a footnote in history.

The discovery of a tiny room, buried under fallen masonry in the corner of one of the walled gardens, was to unlock the secret of their demise. A motto etched into the limestone walls in barely legible pencil still reads “Don’t come here to sleep or slumber” with the names of those who worked there signed under the date – August 1914. Fired by the magnificent obsession to bring these once glorious gardens back to life in every sense and to tell, for the first time, not tales of lords and ladies but of those ‘ordinary’ people who had made these gardens great, before departing for the Great War.

In 2013 the Imperial War Museum recognised Heligan’s Thunderbox Room as a living memorial to The Gardeners of Heligan. A plaque, a Cornish shovel and a WW1 helmet now mark the spot and details can be found at www.iwm.org.uk under entry 63622