The garland at Cotehele

As many of you will know, Cotehele House is our nearest National Trust property and it is a delightful place at any time of the year. But Xmas is a bit special as every November gardeners and volunteers create a 60ft long Christmas garland using thousands of flowers grown on the estate. The giant swag – the longest made in any NT property apparently – hangs in the Great Hall throughout the festive season.

Preparations for the garland begin early in February when the flower seeds are sown. The first flowers are ready for picking from late April and are then dried in a loft on the estate over the summer and autumn before the garland is put together over two weeks in November. Each year the garland is different, depending on which of the flowers have done well. Typically, the garland includes ornamental grasses, everlasting sand flower, straw flower, paper daisy, paper rose, statice and garden thrift. In a good year, some 30,000 flowers are used, with the range being from 20,000 to 35,000 in an exceptional growing year. This year, following our hot summer, the number is a pretty amazing 42,000.

As it's the centenary of the First World War Armistice, Cotehele has been working with print-artist Dominique Coiffait to do something different. To complement the floral garland, Ms Coiffait has created a paper garland of seasonal flowers that winds around the walls of the Great Hall. The printed flowers, foliage and wildlife are interwoven with reproductions of some of the artefacts that have been on display in Cotehele's First World War exhibitions that have been on show over the last four years
 
We went earlier on this week and here are a few of the many images I took. We intend to return in the next couple of days.