Victoria Summerley: These secret gardens are like some forgotten fairy tale

There is something in the human psyche that is drawn to secret gardens. The thought of finding a neglected tangle of rare plants and botanical treasures behind high walls, or a thicket of thorns, seems to speak to our earliest memories, like a fragment of half-remembered fairy tale.

This explains the appeal of Heligan, restored in the 1990s after decades of neglect. That and the lessons it teaches us about man's impact on the natural world.

Heligan's story is a romantic one. Owned by the Tremayne family, it became a great Victorian garden in the style known as Gardenesque. Introduced by the landscape architect John Loudon, Gardenesque was a reaction to the English landscape movement of the 18th century. The idea was to make the garden look recognisably designed, and not easily confused with natural growth.

This involved the use of many exotic plants, which at the time were being brought back from all over the world by plant hunters. It also led to the idea of clearly defined gardens within gardens, such as a grotto.

Heligan's 1,000 acres have all these features. There are the Pleasure Grounds, which include a Ravine, an Italian Garden, and, of course, the brilliantly coloured collections of camellias and towering rhododendrons.

The steep sides of the Jungle create a microclimate that allows more tender plants such as tree ferns, bananas and palms to flourish in a landscape that looks as if it might be home to a few grazing dinosaurs. Then there are the vegetable gardens, the flower gardens and the melon yard, where you find the key to the mystery of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and also to part of their charm.

For what was lost, during the years of the Great War, was not the gardens, but the manpower required to nurture such a high-maintenance estate. The restoration of the gardens was a tribute to those ordinary men and women whose lives were changed forever by the events of 1914.