As well as their residence at medieval Cotehele, the Edgcumbe family’s later home was at Mount Edgcumbe, 14 miles downstream along the winding tidal Tamar, on the Rame Peninsula. Now, with its gardens and pleasure grounds, it is a popular country park opposite Plymouth, accessible via the Cremyll ferry.
High clipped hedges shield the orangery and formal gardens from sight, as across the water are the Royal William Yard, the marina, modern flats, and Drake’s Island out in Plymouth Sound. Lawns studded with bedraggled daisies extend from the blockhouse, and below the old saluting platform, the calls of oystercatchers carry across rocks strewn with bladderwrack and a pebbly shore of calm water. Above an ornamental temple, woodland is underplanted with the garden’s national camellia collection, showing cerise, pale pink, white and flamboyant red blooms on bushes of shiny foliage; but no Cornish Snow, which has been flowering at home since before Christmas.
