Presenting: Two Cornwall Gardens with an artistic twist!

Beyond colourful, textured flowers, lush plants and woodland, most of Cornwall's gardens can be said to boast an imaginative and arty appeal. Owners and head gardeners have created an artistic touch through inspired planting, water features, sculptures and surreal, sometimes even eccentric, installations. Two Cornish gardens which illustrate two very different artistic approaches belong to the Cornwall Gardens project, a three year initiative taking in over 70 gardens in Cornwall. Visit www.gardensofcornwall.com for details of specific gardens.

At Pinsla Lodge, in Cardinham near Bodmin, the owners Mr and Mrs Woodbine have created a romantic 1.5 acre space of dazzling planting and design surrounded by wild woodland, exploding with intense scent and colour, where visitors can lose themselves in the magical atmosphere.

The Woodbines, who describe themselves as garden artists, insist there was no pre-planned rationale to the way their garden has taken shape over the years. Initially, after removing the covering of laurel, they built a simple lawn
garden, but over the years it has gradually evolved in a piecemeal fashion and the lawns have gone. The changes are driven by their interest in creating art, and not based on any overall design theory - they say 'it's all been visualised, rather than rationalised'!

Their desire was to create a garden with ambience. As graduates in sculpture, art features heavily. The emphasis is on creations made out of recycled and cut price building materials. They are constantly adding paths and sculptures - adding more as they get bored! And they seem to have an endless supply of donations and gifts from friends and family.

There are sculptures galore - from Buddhas and magical gremlins, to a stone circle reminiscent of a Celtic folly, and a temple with a mirrored ceiling that was originally made for Glastonbury. The use of granite boulders, slate and stone in the paths, spirals of pebbles in abstract patterns, pots and tiles, and circles of twisted withies, is certainly original.

Hundreds of flowerpots lying idle in the potting shed have been cleverly used to create a snake like pattern; glass swirls have been suspended from an unwound chimney flu; and driftwood from the beach has been covered with polygonium.

As the plants have been planted very close together, they have seeded themselves and grown up where they want to - enabling the garden to do its own thing and resulting in a natural and wild effect.

Up on the North coast at St Mawgan village near Newquay, the Japanese Garden has taken a completely different approach. Originally a bonsai tree grower and running the adjoining nursery the owner's (Mr Hore) passion for bonsais became an obsession and led to the extension of the original nursery business to include a garden, which opened to the public eight years ago, following a seven year build. He says it's been a journey of pure self indulgence!

As the plants and trees have matured they have altered the perspective so the garden's evolution is now about removing rather than adding items. With the help of two gardeners Mr Hore oversees everything and is the sole plantsman, he describes the planting as key and the installations and sculptures as incidental. The garden revolves around form and placement and really comes into its own in the winter when visitors can see the garden's structure and form. Plus there's plenty of colour, thanks to the acers (some 120 varieties),
azaleas, cherry trees and rhododendrons.

The ethos is tranquil, peaceful and meditative. The traditional Japanese garden has been subdivided into miniature gardens of different styles joined together via a stroll garden, a series of interlinking paths. Visitors enter a manicured space and move through to more natural surroundings until they reach the wilderness.

The formalised framework to a traditional garden requires symbolic and ritualised placement of certain pieces - which has been achieved with Japanese installations, such as authentic basins and granite lanterns, imported from Japan.

For example, the basin at the entrance is for washing the hands on entry, symbolic of cleansing the soul, the dust hole - a hollow in the ground - is for discarding emotional rubbish, and the tea lantern is positioned to light the route and lead the way to the Tea House. The Tea House features a specially commissioned large walnut, freeform sculpture carved from the trunk.

The Zen Garden features old weathered stones set on a bed of gravel (it's raked daily so the garden dies and is reborn each day in accordance with the Zen tradition). The Bamboo Grove is home to a hand carved granite Buddha; whilst in and around the water garden there's a decorative shishi-odoshi (deer scarer) - water from a small bamboo flume flows into a hollow bamboo tube pivoted on a
stand; and a tsukubai (water basin). On the hillside top stands a 3.5 metre tall granite lantern, its multi-tiered roof like plates and rings are topped with a lotus blossom.

Of course a visit to any of Cornwall's wonderful gardens can be combined with a visit to one of the county's many artistic centres, such as St Ives - home to the Tate and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden - or Lamorna, home to the Lamorna School of Artists in the 19th Century and now a thriving artistic community. For more details visit www.gardensofcornwall.com or call 01872 322800 for a Cornwall Gardens Guide.