Productive Garden

Welcome to the Finest Productive Gardens in Britain; sure to top any list of gardens to visit for inspiration or contemplation.

Award-winning restoration

Acting as a living window to the past, our award-winning restoration of the Victorian Productive Gardens stands as a working memorial to Heligan’s Lost Gardeners.

Intensively cultivated throughout the year, these gardens once met almost all the needs of the Tremayne family and their guests. Today, over 300 varieties of mostly heritage fruit, vegetables, salad and herbs are lovingly tended to supply the Heligan Kitchen with fresh, seasonal produce throughout the year. Here, Heligan’s unique palette of heritage flavours are incorporated within our daily lunch menu, so that you too can taste the fruits of our labours.

Cultivated throughout the year!

The Kitchen Garden, walled Flower Garden and Melon Yard are the stage for a glorious array of traditional crops and growing methods. Learn about exotic glasshouse fruits and Victorian crop rotation, and discover atmospheric working buildings, offering an intriguing insight into a lost world. 

Productive 4 1250 827 S C1

Productive Gardening Team

Today’s Productive Gardening Team reflect the same numbers and horticultural practices as their Victorian predecessors. These labour-intensive gardening methods, which start with nurture of the soil, continue to hold great relevance and interest to anyone with a passion for ‘growing their own’.

To say that our Productive Gardens are an inspiration, simply doesn’t do them justice. 

To anyone planning to develop their own Heligan inspired vegetable patch, you’ll be pleased to hear that the Heligan Shop offers an exclusive range of heritage seeds within our unique Head Gardener’s Choice Seed Range to get you started.

Look out for

  1. Diggory 1 1250 827 S C1

    Diggory, our resident scarecrow

    He loves posing for photos with you!

  2. Toby Strong Image The Potting Shed

    The Potting Shed

    Rustic, nostalgic and still in use today, this atmospheric working building can be found in the corner of the Melon Yard.

  3. Swallows Thunderbox 1250 827 S C1

    The Thunderbox Room

    It was here that the names of Heligan’s Victorian gardeners were first discovered and it was this discovery that ultimately inspired the gardens’ restoration. This historic room is now recognised as a Living Memorial to ‘the Gardeners of Heligan House’ by the Imperial War Museum.

    Imperial War Museum

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