Mike Nelhams is perched high on a ladder inspecting the head of a particularly striking Phoenix canariensis. One of dozens of Canary Island palms dotted over a garden landscape that explodes with vibrant colour. There are Lapageria from Chile, Protea from South Africa and Clianthus from New Zealand.
Far away in the eastern sky, there is the repetitive low thud of an approaching helicopter. Mike has a good ear for helicopters. Horticulture may be his passion, but his devotion to exotic plants and trees sometimes has to take second place to the helicopter. Mike Nelhams is a man of multiple callings. By inclination he is the curator of the Abbey Gardens on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly. But Mike, like other staff at the gardens, puts in a regular stint at Tresco Heliport too, sometimes as air traffic controller and occasionally on the roster as the duty fireman.
It is no more than a few minutes before the Sikorsky helicopter settles gently onto the Tresco helipad, its rotor still spinning as it decants a handful of visitors plus a couple of islanders who return to their Lilliputian world after a day or two away on the mainland. England is another world for this island community in the North Atlantic. Tresco may be nominally part of England but in good weather it seems more Caribbean than European - lush, verdant and utterly seductive in an ocean that changes colour with the tides and the mood of the skies: sometimes sapphire blue, often turquoise and occasionally even cauldron black.
Not a lot of gardens around Europe have their own heliport. But the Abbey Gardens on Tresco, where Mike and his team defy Atlantic winds and salt spray to maintain one of Europe's boldest horticultural adventures, are no ordinary garden. "We can experiment in a way that a more formal botanical garden might find a shade too unconventional," he explains. "We are not at all constrained by tradition, so we may have an avenue that mixes plants from three continents. That would make the traditionalists wince. But we are a private garden on a private island and so we can do exactly as we want."
Tresco may be nominally part of England but in good weather it seems more Caribbean than European — lush, verdant and utterly seductive.
And Tresco is a private island, after a fashion. True, it is nominally owned by the Duchy of Cornwall and is therefore part of the estate of the Prince of Wales. But Tresco is leased from the Duchy by Robert Dorrien-Smith, and the Smith family has managed Tresco since 1834. Augustus Smith was the first tenant, and a modest rent of forty pounds per year allowed Smith to style himself Lord Proprietor of the Isles. Augustus Smith immediately set about building himself a family home around the ruins of the old Benedictine Abbey on Tresco, the former monks having been chased from the Isles of Scilly by pirates and brigands long before the Reformation.
Climb up beyond the bursting groves of eucalyptus that flank the southern slopes of Abbey Hill and there is a stern memorial to old Augustus. A century and more of salt spray has eroded the monument, but the view north over New Grimsby Harbour towards Tresco’s west coast and the neighbouring island of Bryher is just as fine as ever it was in Augustus Smith’s day. It is a spot Mike Nelhams values, and not just because it is one of the few places on Tresco where mobile phone reception is guaranteed. “The best view on the island,” he says, as if he were seeing it for the very first time. He gazes out across a myriad of islets perched on a dead-flat sea. There are the bulwarks of Cromwell’s castle that protect the northern access to New Grimsby Harbour. Swing round to the southwest and there are clear views over to tiny Samson and a scatter of uninhabited islands beyond. These are the Isles of Scilly described by Virginia Woolf as having the look of mountain tops almost awash in a vast ocean.
The Scilly Isles are served by no car ferry, so the effects of remoteness impact on everyday life. Tresco is car-free, its vehicular traffic being limited to tractors, bicycles, golf-carts and the occasional shopping trolley. But everyone has boats, used more for flitting between islands than for journeys to the British mainland. Scilly islanders are born with sea legs! This past summer four lads from Tresco attempted to row from New York right across the Atlantic to Tresco, an epic voyage that was expected to last a couple of months. From the Statue of Liberty to New Grimsby harbour, if all had gone to plan. But two weeks into the ocean voyage their boat was overcome by vast waves and it was only by good fortune that the four rowers were rescued by a passing ship bound for Europe.
Most travellers make for the Isles of Scilly in a less strenuous way, opting for the seasonal passenger ferry service on the Scillonian III from Penzance in Cornwall to St Mary’s or flying in by plane or helicopter. The principal island of St Mary’s is the hub of Scilly life, but in the tourism stakes Tresco runs St Mary’s a close second. The opening of the Tresco Heliport twenty-five years ago was a milestone allowing visitors to fly directly into Tresco. Prior to that all inbound helicopters went only to St Mary’s and passengers then transferred to Tresco by boat. The heliport is a mark of the way in which Robert Dorrien-Smith and the Tresco Estate have energetically promoted their island.
Tresco folk have always been resourceful. They long made a living from seaweed harvesting, kelp production and piloting ships through the treacherous waters that surround the Isles of Scilly. But the Tresco pilots rarely stole a march over those on neighbouring St Mary’s or St Agnes. Men on those other islands, a fraction further west, had the edge when it came to rowing out at speed to reach an incoming barque or a schooner looking for help in the seas out beyond Bishop Rock. The wooden rowing boats used by the would-be pilots were known as gigs and had names like Czar, Empress or Albion. The first gig out was the one that bagged the job of piloting a foreign ship through the maze of rocky shoals and islands that have put paid to many a captain’s career.
Sculpture on the Tresco coast just north of Old Grimsby (photo © hidden europe).
Scilly is a place for wrecks, and island fortunes have often been tied up with divine providence. John Troutbeck, chaplain on Tresco in 1779, is alleged to have regularly concluded evening prayers at his church with the petition:
We pray, O Lord, that there be no wrecks this night, but if there should be wrecks, we ask that Thou might guide them towards the Scilly Isles for the benefit of all the poor inhabitants.
If poverty was once the hallmark of island life, no longer is that so today. There was a time when poorer Tresco folk relied on boiled limpets for supper. They gathered them on the beach at low tide and called them sea-beef. Nowadays chef Peter Marshall at the Island Hotel works wonders with wild halibut and saffron mash, and the sole grocery store on the island would not look at all out of place in chic Chelsea or affluent Islington.
In the eighteenth century, well meaning Anglicans set out from England to bring a dose of upright Christianity to the wild islanders on Tresco, any civilising effects (if such there were) of their earlier brush with the Benedictines having evidently been dissipated over the centuries. Dispatches mentioned the poverty and unkempt nature of island life, as emissaries from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) did their utmost to “counteract the growth of vice and immorality” in this far-flung part of England. Support from SPCK introduced a church and a school to Tresco.
Generations of the Smith family have perpetuated Augustus’ commitment to bettering Tresco. The present incumbents have sponsored some quite remarkable sculptures around the island.
Augustus Smith’s arrival in Scilly in 1834 brought a breath of modernity to island life. From the outset he insisted on compulsory education for all children, a step that was utterly revolutionary for its time. Smith consolidated land holdings and, by giving tenants a guarantee of lifelong security, he gave them every incentive to improve their land. And by providing employment to men on a range of programmes to improve the islands, Smith hoped to quash the islanders’ dependence on smuggling.
Smith offset the dominance of the principal island, St Mary’s, by electing to live not there but on Tresco. Even today, St Mary’s folk are bemused that he eschewed the metropolitan pleasures of the islands’ tiny capital, Hugh Town on St Mary’s, in favour of remote Tresco. Smith’s home on the site of the old Benedictine monastery became known as Tresco Abbey. From his Tresco base, Smith entertained enquiring Victorians who ventured to the Isles of Scilly, among them the writer Wilkie Collins who wrote positively of Smith’s efforts in improving Scilly.
Since then, successive generations of the Smith family have perpetuated Augustus’ commitment to bettering Tresco. Each makes a particular contribution. The present incumbents, Robert and Lucy Dorrien- Smith, have sponsored some quite remarkable sculptures around the island. There are dolphins delicately poised in flight on the shoreline near the Island Hotel at Old Grimsby, a trio of Tresco children playing at the south end of the Abbey Gardens and a magnificent statue of Gaia presiding over the gardens. David Wynne’s sensual sculpture of Mother Earth seems perfectly at home amid the palm trees.
Europe is blessed with many memorably beautiful islands. The Hebrides, the Lofotens and the Cyclades all boast little pearls that are justifiably celebrated for their exquisite landscapes. And Europe has many sensational gardens: from Giverny to Sissinghurst, from Villandry in the Loire to the Hanbury Gardens perched on the very edge of the Mediterranean at La Mortola. But few can match Tresco’s claim to blend uniquely insular qualities with horticultural exotica. Mike Nelhams, who this year marks twenty- five years tending the Abbey Gardens, could say a whole lot more about Tresco’s peculiar charms. But there’s a drone in the sky away to the east. Another helicopter. Another handful of visitors arriving for a few hours on the little island that, seen at its best, seems improbably like a paradise on earth. Mike apologises, and heads off at a brisk pace down through the groves of eucalyptus towards the island heliport for another stint as duty fireman.
