Back to Cornwall and some horti-culture

In the last post on Cornwall, I mentioned that it is up and down.  This leads to some good cliffs, especially as the main rock is granite.  Combined with a little, sorry a lot of imagination and you end up with Minack Theatre.  It was created by Rowena Cade, who from 1931 until she died in 1983  planned, built and financed it pretty much single handedly. It is not your average person who see their cliff edge rocky garden as an ideal place to literally carve out theatre. Let alone then have the determination and skills to build it themselves. But her efforts resulted in this:



Not a bad place to watch a play, and when you get to the bottom you really see how much work was put into carving it all out.


Even the natural outcrops of cliff have been used


The setting is stunning, rocky cliffs above a series of stunning sandy beaches


But what makes it a must see, on-top of all that, is that since 1998 the free space has been planted up as a sub-tropical garden. Most importantly mainly containing succulents.


It was badly hit by the bad winter a couple of years back, but seems to have recovered and the plants now looking very natural.




lots of very nice plants





No space is wasted, even the flat roof is planted up.


Once you have exhausted the views in the theatre you can walk down (the very steep stepped path) to the beach.


Then to reward you after the walk back up you can have another peak in the gardens on the way to the car park.  There is always something hiding that you didn't notice last time.


The question is, if you went to see a play there, would you be watching the play or the plants?