Luxury garden holidays in Cornwall

Luxury isn't bound by bricks and mortar, and while velvet sofas and chandeliers make for a certain dose of enchantment, it's the landscape which really sets our souls on fire. Think dancing swags of purple wisteria, tropical, bohemian garden paradises not out of place in Ibiza, and acres of historic Cornish farmland peppered with emerald forests and secluded clearings ripe for summer picnics. Our luxury garden holidays in Cornwall celebrate the perfectly pruned and the deliberately rewilded. They pop a hot tub here, a sun terrace there, and often a natural swimming pool for good measure. These are paradisiacal lands where scrambling clematis reaches skyward and al fresco living is the name of the game.

These secret garden escapes are fit to be pulled from the imagination of Frances Hodgson Burnett herself. We’ve scoured the courtyards and stately gardens of sweet sleep-two cottages and large, luxury country homes across the Cornish coast, from fairytale woodlands in Helford to mindful acres in the Tamar Valley, to find secret boltholes where the emphasis is on green… and pink, and yellow, and blue. Imagine walking barefoot down sun-baked steps with the morning paper and a basket of croissants, sipping a frothy coffee in the dappled light of an ancient Indian pool house. Or sending all the children (and the dogs, too) out to take turns roly-polying down the pillowly sand dunes. The secret's out.