Rhododendrons and Memories of Manderley: A Garden Visit - Gardenista
“Rhododendrons stood fifty feet high” along the abandoned drive to Manderley. We visited the rhododendrons of Caerhays on the sort of misty morning that belongs in a mystery novel.
Photography by Heather Edwards, unless otherwise noted.
Rhododendrons at Caerhays Castle in Cornwall. Its sense of privacy is endearing: visitors must park by the sea and face the walk up to the castellated manor.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Rhododendrons create a carpet of color.
Jungly rhododendrons and palms in Cornwall.
Rhododendrons, camellias, and magnolias (and everything and anything else as well) find a cozy combination of acidic soil in a damp valley an invitation to unbridled growth.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Rhododendrons at Caerhays in Cornwall.
In Daphne du Maurier’s novel, before the second Mrs. de Winter fully realizes that Manderley may not be providing a home of happy-ever-afters, her husband Maxim (Laurence Olivier in other words) takes her to a quiet part of the estate called the Happy Valley.
Caerhays in Cornwall, looking out over Porthluney Beach.
Rain and wind batters the estate but the garden thrives within a shelter belt of trees and giant shrubs.
Super-sized rhododendrons in Cornwall.
She describes how she had always thought of these plants as ordinary things, growing neatly in island beds: “And these were monsters, rearing to the sky,” she worries.
Snake-like trunks and a magenta carpet at Caerhays in Cornwall. The Morning Room, where Mrs. de Winter is expected to sit planning menus, is different: it was Rebecca’s center of operations and is filled with armfuls of the dreaded crimson rhododendrons.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
A view over the sea, from the windy front of the house at Caerhays. Saturated color works brilliantly in Cornwall, with red clashing nicely with magenta, mainly because of all the green.